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EDITED  BY  JOHN  MOELEY 


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MILTON 


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MILTON 


BY 

MARK  PATTISON,  B.D. 

EECTOB    OF    LINCOLN    COLLEGE,    OXFOKD 


govtbtm : 
MACMILLAN     AND     CO. 

1880 

The  Right  of  Tronslatiun  and  Reproductioti  is  Reserved. 


SEVENTH    THOUSAND. 


CONTENTS. 

FIRST  PERIOD.     1608—1639. 
CHAPTER  I. 

PACK 

Family— School— College 1 

CHAPTER  II. 

Residence    at  Horton — L'allegko — II   Penseroso— Ar- 
cades—Comus — Lycidas 12 

CHAPTER  III. 
Journey  to  Italy 32 

SECOND  PERIOD.     1640-1660. 

CHAPTER  IV. 
Educational  Theory — Teaching 43 

CHAPTER  V. 
Marriage  and  Pamphlet  on  Divorce       ....        50 

CHAPTER   VI. 
Pamphlets 64 

CHAPTER   VII. 
Biographical.     1640-1649 85 


vi  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

PAGE 

TriE  Latin  Secretaryship 93 

CHAPTER  IX. 
Milton  and  Salmasius — Blindness 105 

CHAPTER  X. 

Milton  and  Morus — The  Second  Defence — TnE  Defence 

for  himself 112 

CHAPTER   XI. 
Latin  Secretaryship  comes  to  an  end — Milton's  Friends     119 

THIRD   PERIOD.     16G0 — 1G74. 

CHAPTER  XII. 
BiooRAPnicAL— Literary  Occupation — Religious  Opinions     140 

CHAPTER  XIII. 
Paradise  Lost— Paradise  Regained— Samson  Agonistes  .    165 


MILTON 


MILTON. 


FIRST  PERIOD.     1608—1639. 


CHAPTER   I. 

FAMILY — SCHOOL  — COLLEGE. 

In  the  seventeenth  century  it  was  not  the  custom  to  pub- 
lish two  volumes  upon  every  man  or  woman  whose  name 
had  appeared  on  a  title-page.  Nor,  where  lives  of  authors 
were  written,  were  they  written  with  the  redundancy  of 
particulars  which  is  now  allowed.  Especially  are  the  lives 
of  the  poets  and  dramatists  obscure  and  meagrely  recorded. 
Of  Milton,  however,  we  know  more  personal  details  than 
of  any  man  of  letters  of  that  age.  Edward  Phillips,  the 
poet's  nephew,  who  was  brought  up  by  his  uncle,  and 
lived  in  habits  of  intercourse  with  him  to  the  last,  wrote 
a  life,  brief,  inexact,  superficial,  but  valuable  from  the 
nearness  of  the  writer  to  the  subject  of  his  memoir.  A 
cotemporary  of  Milton,  John  Aubrey  (b.  1625),  "a  very 
honest  man,  and  accurate  in  his  accounts  of  matters  of 
fact,"  as  Toland  says  of  him,  made  it  his  business  to  learn 
all  he  could  about  Milton's  habits.     Aubrey  was  himself 

B 


2  FIRST  PERIOD.     1608—1639.  [ciWP. 

acquainted  with  Milton,  and  diligently  catechised  the 
poet's  widow,  his  brother,  and  his  nephew,  scrupulously 
writing  down  each  detail  as  it  came  to  him,  in  the  minutes 
of  lives  which  he  supplied  to  Antony  Wood  to  be  worked 
up  in  his  Athence  and  Fasti.  Aubrey  was  only  an  anti- 
quarian collector,  and  was  mainly  dependent  on  what 
could  be  learned  from  the  family.  None  of  Milton's 
family,  and  least  of  all  Edward  Phillips,  were  of  a  capacity 
to  apprehend  moral  or  mental  qualities,  and  they  could 
only  tell  Aubrey  of  his  goings  out  and  his  comings  in,  of 
the  clothes  he  wore,  the  dates  of  events,  the  names  of  his 
acquaintance.  In  compensation  for  the  want  of  observa- 
tion on  the  part  of  his  own  kith  and  kin,  Milton  himself, 
with  a  superb  and  ingenuous  egotism,  has  revealed  the 
secret  of  his  thoughts  and  feelings  in  numerous  autobio- 
graphical passages  of  his  prose  writings.  From  what  he 
directly  communicates,  and  from  what  he  unconsciously 
betrays,  we  obtain  an  internal  life  of  the  mind,  more 
ample  than  that  external  life  of  the  bodily  machine, 
which  we  owe  to  Aubrey  and  Phillips. 

In  our  own  generation  all  that  printed  books  or  writ- 
ten documents  have  preserved  about  Milton  has  been 
laboriously  brought  together  by  Professor  David  Masson, 
in  whose  Life  of  Milton  Ave  have  the  most  exhaustive  bio- 
graphy that  ever  was  compiled  of  any  Englishman.  It  is 
a  noble  and  final  monument  erected  to  the  poet's  memory, 
two  centuries  after  his  death.  My  excuse  for  attempting 
to  write  of  Milton  after  Mr.  Masson  is  that  his  life  is  in  six 
volumes  octavo,  with  a  total  of  some  four  to  five  thousand 
]  ;es.  The  present  outline  is  written  for  a  different  class 
of  readers,  those,  namely,  who  cannot  afford  to  know 
nunc  of  Milton  than  can  he  told  in  some  two  hundred 
and  fifty  pages. 


i.]  BIRTH.  3 

A  family  of  Miltons,  deriving  the  name  in  all  probability 
from  the  parish  of  Great  Milton  near  Thame,  is  found  in 
various  branches  spread  over  Oxfordshire  and  the  adjoin- 
ing counties  in  the  reign  of  Elisabeth.  The  poet's  grand- 
father was  a  substantial  yeoman,  living  at  Stanton  St.  John, 
about  five  miles  from  Oxford,  within  the  forest  of  Shot- 
over,  of  which  he  was  also  an  under-ranger.  The  ranger's 
son  John  was  at  school  in  Oxford,  possibly  as  a  chorister, 
conformed  to  the  Established  Church,  and  was  in  conse- 
quence cast  off  by  his  father,  who  adhered  to  the  old  faith. 
The  disinherited  son  went  up  to  London,  and  by  the 
assistance  of  a  friend  was  set  up  in  business  as  a  scrivener. 
A  scrivener  discharged  some  of  the  functions  which,  at 
the  present  day,  are  undertaken  for  us  in  a  solicitor's 
office.  John  Milton  the  father,  being  a  man  of  probity 
and  force  of  character,  was  soon  on  the  way  to  acquire 
"a  plentiful  fortune."  But  he  continued  to  live  over  his 
shop,  which  was  in  Bread  Street,  Cheapside,  and  which 
bore  the  sign  of  the  Spread  Eagle,  the  family  crest. 

It  was  at  the  Spread  Eagle  that  his  eldest  son,  John 
Milton,  was  born,  9th  December,  1608,  being  thus 
exactly  cotemporary  with  Lord  Clarendon,  who  also 
died  in  the  same  year  as  the  poet.  Milton  must  be 
added  to  the  long  roll  of  our  poets  who  have  been 
natives  of  the  city  which  now  never  sees  sunlight  or 
blue  sky,  along  with  Chaucer,  Spenser,  Herrick,  Cowley, 
Shirley,  Ben  Jonson,  Pope,  Gray,  Keats.  Besides  attend- 
ing as  a  clay-scb  olar  at  St.  Paul's  School,  which  was 
close  at  hand,  his  father  engaged  for  him  a  private  tutor 
at  home.  The  household  of  the  Spread  Eagle  not  only 
enjoyed  civic  prosperity,  but  some  share  of  that  liberal 
cultivation,  which,  if  not  imbibed  in  the  home,  neither 
school  nor  college  ever  confers.     The  scrivener  was  not 

B  2 


4  FIRST  PERIOD.     160S— 1639.  [chai\ 

only  an  amateur  in  music,  but  a  composer,  whose  tunes, 
songs,  and  airs  found  their  way  into  the  best  collections 
of  music.  Both  schoolmaster  and  tutor  were  men  of 
mark.  The  high  master  of  St.  Paul's  at  that  time 
was  Alexander  Gill,  an  M.A.  of  Corpus  Christi  College, 
Oxford,  who  was  "  esteemed  to  have  such  an  excellent 
way  of  training  up  youth,  that  none  in  his  time  went 
beyond  it."  The  private  tutor  was  Thomas  Young,  who 
was,  or  had  been,  curate  to  Mr.  Gataker,  of  Eotherhithe, 
itself  a  certificate  of  merit,  even  if  we  had  not  the  pupil's 
emphatic  testimony  of  gratitude.  Milton's  fourth  elegy 
is  addressed  to  Young,  when,  in  1627,  he  was  settled  at 
Hamburg,  crediting  him  with  having  first  infused  into  his 
pupil  a  taste  for  classic  literature  and  poetry.  Biographers 
have  derived  Milton's  Presbyterianism  in  1641  from  the 
lessons  twenty  years  before  of  this  Thomas  Young,  a 
Scotchman,  and  one  of  the  authors  of  the  Smectymnuus. 
This,  however,  is  a  misreading  of  Milton's  mind— a  mind 
which  was  an  organic  whole — "whose  seed  was  in  itself," 
self-determined ;  not  one  whose  opinions  can  be  accounted 
for  by  contagion  or  casual  impact. 

Of  Milton's  boyish  exercises  two  have  beon  preserved. 
They  are  English  paraphrases  of  two  of  the  Davidic 
Psalms,  and  were  done  at  the  age  of  fifteen.  That  they 
were  thought  by  himself  worth  printing  in  the  same 
volume  with  Comus,  is  the  most  noteworthy  thing  about 
them.  No  words  are  so  commonplace  but  that  they  can 
be  made  to  yield  inference  by  a  biographer.  And  even 
in  these  school  exercises  we  think  we  can  discern  that 
the  future  poet  was  already  a  diligent  reader  of  Sylvester's 
Du  Bartas  (1605),  the  patriarch  of  Protestant  poetry, 
and  of  Fairfax's  Tasso  (1600).  There  are  other  indi- 
cations that,  from   very   early   years,  poetry  had  assumed 


r.]  BOYITOOD  AND  YOUTH.  5 

a  place  in  Milton's  mind,  not  merely  as  a  juvenile  pastime, 
but  as  an  occupation  of  serious  import. 

Young  Gill,  son  of  the  high  master,  a  school-fellow  of 
Milton,  went  up  to  Trinity,  Oxford,  where  he  got  into 
trouble  by  being  informed  against  by  Chillingworth,  who 
reported  incautious  political  speeches  of  Gill  to  his 
godfather,  Laud.  With  Gill  Milton  corresponded;  they 
exchanged  their  verses,  Greek,  Latin,  and  English,  with 
a  confession  on  Milton's  part  that  he  prefers  English  and 
Latin  composition  to  Greek ;  that  to  write  Greek  verses 
in  this  age  is  to  sing  to  the  deaf.  Gill,  Milton  finds  "  a 
severe  critic  of  poetry,  however  disposed  to  be  lenient  to 
his  friend's  attempts." 

If  Milton's  genius  did  not  announce  itself  in  his  para- 
phrases of  Psalms,  it  did  in  his  impetuosity  in  learning, 
"  which  I  seized  with  such  eagerness  that  from  the 
twelfth  year  of  my  age,  I  scarce  ever  went  to  bed  before 
midnight."  Such  is  his  own  account.  And  it  is  worth 
notice  that  we  have  here  an  incidental  test  of  the  trust- 
worthiness of  Aubrey's  reminiscences.  Aubrey's  words 
are,  "When  he  was  very  young  he  studied  very  hard, 
and  sate  up  verjr  late,  commonly  till  twelve  or  one  o'clock 
at  night ;  and  his  father  ordered  the  maid  to  sit  up  for 
him." 

He  was  ready  for  college  at  sixteen,  not  earlier  than 
the  usual  age  at  that  period.  As  his  schoolmasters,  both 
the  Gills,  were  Oxford  men  (Young  was  of  St.  Andrew's), 
it  might  have  been  expected  that  the  young  scholar  would 
nave  been  placed  at  Oxford.  However,  it  was  determined 
that  he  should  go  to  Cambridge,  where  he  was  admitted  a 
pensioner  of  Christ's,  12th  February,  1625,  and  com- 
menced residence  in  the  Easter  term  ensuing.  Perhaps 
his  father  feared  the  growing  High  Church,  or,  as  it  was 


G  FIRST  PERIOD.     1C08— 1G39.  [chap. 

then  called,  Arniinianism,  of  Lis  own  university.  It  so 
happened,  however,  that  the  tutor  to  whom  the  young 
Milton  was  consigned  was  specially  noted  for  Arminian 
proclivities.  This  was  William  Chappell,  then  Fellow  of 
Christ's,  who  so  recommended  himself  to  Laud  by  his  party 
zeal,  that  he  was  advanced  to  he  Provost  of  Dublin  and 
Bishop  of  Cork. 

Milton  was  one  of  those  pupils  who  are  more  likely 
to  react  against  a  tutor  than  to  take  a  ply  from  him. 
A  preaching  divine — Chappell  composed  a  treatise  on 
the  art  of  preaching — a  narrow  ecclesiastic  of  the  type 
loved  by  Laud,  was  exactly  the  man  who  would  drive 
Milton  into  opposition.  But  the  tutor  of  the  seventeenth 
century  was  not  able,  like  the  easy-going  tutor  of  the 
eighteenth,  to  leave  the  young  rebel  to  pursue  the  reading 
of  his  choice  in  his  own  chamber.  Chappell  endeavoured 
to  drive  his  pupil  along  the  scholastic  highway  of  exercises. 
Milton,  returning  to  Cambridge  after  his  summer  vacation, 
eager  for  the  acquisition  of  wisdom,  complains  that  he 
"  was  dragged  from  his  studies,  and  compelled  to  employ 
himself  in  composing  some  frivolous  declamation  !  "  In- 
docile, as  he  confesses  himself  (indocilisque  astas  prava 
magistra  fuit),  ho  kicked  against  either  the  discipline  or 
the  exercises  exacted  by  college  rules.  He  was  punished. 
Aubrey  had  heard  that  he  was  flogged,  a  thing  not  im- 
possible in  itself,  as  the  Admonition  Book  of  Emanuel 
gives  an  instance  of  corporal  chastisement  as  late  as  1667. 
Aubrey's  statement,  however,  is  a  dubitative  interlineation 
in  his  MS.,  and  Milton's  age,  seventeen,  as  well  as  the 
silence  of  his  later  detractors,  who  raked  up  everything 
which  could  be  told  to  his  disadvantage,  concur  to  make 
us  hesitate  to  accept  a  fact  on  so  slender  evidence.  Any- 
how, Milton  was  sent  away  from  college  for  a  time,  in  the 


r.J  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  7 

year  1G27,  in  consequence  of  something  unpleasant  which 
had  occurred.  That  it  was  something  of  which  he  was 
not  ashamed  is  clear,  from  his  alluding  to  it  himself  in 
the  lines  written  at  the  time, — 

Nee  duri  libet  usque  minas  perferre  magistri 
CEeteraque  ingenio  non  subeunda  meo. 

And  that  the  tutor  was  not  considered  to  have  been 
wholly  free  from  blame  is  evident  from  the  fact  that  the 
master  transferred  Milton  from  Chappcll  to  another  tutor, 
a  very  unusual  proceeding.  Whatever  the  nature  of  the 
punishment,  it  was  not  what  is  known  as  rustication  ; 
for  Mdton  did  not  lose  a  term,  taking  his  two  degrees  of 
B.A.  and  M.A.  in  regular  course,  at  the  earliest  date 
from  his  matriculation  permitted  by  the  statutes.  The 
one  outbreak  of  juvenile  petulance  and  indiscipline  over, 
Milton's  force  of  character  and  unusual  attainments  ac- 
quired him  the  esteem  of  his  seniors.  The  nickname  of 
"  the  lady  of  Christ's"  given  him  in  derision  by  his  fellow- 
students,  is  an  attestation  of  virtuous  conduct.  Ten 
years  later,  in  1642,  Milton  takes  an  opportunity  to 
"acknowledge  publicly,  with  all  grateful  mind,  that  more 
than  ordinary  respect  which  I  found,  above  many  of  my 
equals,  at  the  hands  of  those  courteous  and  learned  men, 
the  Fellows  of  that  college  wherein  I  spent  some  years ; 
who,  at  my  parting  after  I  had  taken  two  degrees,  as  the 
manner  is,  signified  many  ways  how  much  better  it  would 
content  them  that  I  would  stay ;  as  by  many  letters  full 
of  kindness  and  loving  respect,  both  before  that  time  and 
long  after,  I  was  assured  of  their  singular  good  affection 
towards  me." 

The  words  "  how  much  better  it  would  content  them 
that  I  would  stay "  have  been  thought  to  hint  at  the 


8  FIRST  PERIOD.     160S— 1639.  [chap. 

■i'  of  a  fellowship  at  Christ's.  It  is  highly  improbable 
that  such  an  offer  was  ever  made.  There  had  been  two 
vacancies  in  the  roll  of  fellows  since  Milton  had  become 
eligible  by  taking  his  B.A.  degree,  and  he  had  been 
passed  over  in  favour  of  juniors.  It  is  possible  that 
Milton  was  not  statutably  eligible,  for,  by  the  statutes  of 
Christ's,  there  could  not  be,  at  one  time,  more  than  two 
fellows  who  were  natives  of  the  same  county.  Edward 
King,  who  was  Milton's  junior,  was  put  in,  not  by  college 
election,  but  by  royal  mandate.  And  in  universities 
generally,  it  is  not  literature  or  general  acquirements 
which  recommend  a  candidate  for  endowed  posts,  but 
technical  skill  in  the  prescribed  exercises,  and  a  pedagogic 
intention. 

Further  than  this,  had  a  fellowship  in  his  college  been 
attainable,  it  would  not  have  had  much  attraction  for 
Milton.  A  fellowship  implied  two  things,  residence  in 
college,  with  teaching,  and  orders  in  the  church.  With 
neither  of  these  two  conditions  was  Milton  prepared  to 
comply.  In  1632,  when  he  proceeded  to  his  M.A.  degree, 
Milton  was  twenty-four,  he  had  been  seven  years  in 
college,  and  had  therefore  sufficient  experience  what 
college  life  was  like.  He  who  was  so  impatient  of  the 
"turba  legentum  prava"  in  the  Bodleian  library,  could 
not  have  patiently  consorted  with  the  vulgar-minded  and 
illiterate  ecclesiastics,  who  peopled  the  colleges  of  that 
day.  Even  Merle,,  though  the  author  of  Claris  Apo- 
,.ihjiiira  was  steeped  in  the  soulless  clericalism  of  his 
age,  could  not  support  his  brother-fellows  without  fre- 
quent retirements  to  Balsham,  "  being  not  willing  to  be 
joined  with  such  company."  To  be  dependent  upon 
Bainbrigge's  (the  Master  of  Christ's)  good  pleasure  for  a 
supply  of  pupils;    to  have  to    live  in  daily'  intercourse 


i.]  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  9 

with  tlie  Powers  and  the  Chappells,  such  as  we  know 
them  from  Mede's  letters,  was  an  existence  to  which 
oidy  the  want  of  daily  bread  could  have  driven  Milton. 
Happily  his  father's  circumstances  were  not  such  as  to 
make  a  fellowship  pecuniarily  an  object  to  the  son.  If  he 
longed  for  "  the  studious  cloister's  pale,"  he  had  been,  now 
for  seven  years,  near  enough  to  college  life  to  have  dis- 
pelled the  dream  that  it  was  a  life  of  lettered  leisure  and 
philosophic  retirement.  It  was  just  about  Milton's  time 
that  the  college  tutor  finally  supplanted  the  university 
professor,  a  system  which  implied  the  substitution  of 
excercises  performed  by  the  pupil  for  instruction  given 
by  the  teacher.  Whatever  advantages  this  system 
brought  with  it,  it  brought  inevitably  the  degradation  of 
the  teacher,  who  was  thus  dispensed  from  knowledge, 
having  only  to  attend  to  form.  The  time  of  the  college 
tutor  was  engrossed  by  the  details  of  scholastic  super- 
intendence, and  the  frivolous  worry  of  academical  busi 
ness.  Admissions,  matriculations,  disputations,  declama 
tions,  the  formalities  of  degrees,  public  reception  of  royal 
and  noble  visitors,  filled  every  hour  of  his  day,  and  left 
no  time,  even  if  he  had  had  the  taste,  for  private  study. 
To  teaching,  as  we  shall  see,  Milton  was  far  from  averse. 
But  then  it  must  be  teaching  as  he  understood  it,  a  teach- 
ing which  should  expand  the  intellect  and  raise  the  cha- 
racter, not  dexterity  in  playing  with  the  verbal  formulae 
of  the  disputations  of  the  schools. 

Such  an  occupation  could  have  no  attractions  for  one 
who  was  even  now  meditating  II  Penseroso  (composed 
1633).  At  twenty  he  had  already  confided  to  his  school- 
fellow, the  younger  Gill,  the  secret  of  his  discontent 
with  the  Cambridge  tone.  "  Here  among  us,"  he  writes 
from  college,  "  are  barely  one  or  two  who  do  not  flutter 


10  FIRST  PERIOD.     160S— 1639.  [chap. 

off,  all  unfledged,  into  theology,  having  gotten  of  philology 
or  of  philosophy  scarce  so  much  as  a  smattering.  And 
for  theology  they  are  content  with  just  what  is  enough 
to  enable  them  to  patch  up  a  paltry  sermon."  He  re- 
tained the  same  feeling  towards  his  Alma  Mater  in  1641, 
when  he  wrote  (Eeason  of  Church  Government),  "  Cam- 
bridge, which  as  in  the  time  of  her  better  health,  and 
mine  own  younger  judgment,  I  never  greatly  admired, 
so  now  much  less  .  .  .  ." 

On  a  review  of  all  these  indications  of  feeling,  I  should 
conclude  that  Milton  never  had  serious  thoughts  of  a 
college  fellowship,  and  that  his  antipathy  arose  from  a 
sense  of  his  own  incompatibility  of  temper  with  academic 
life,  and  was  not,  like  Phineas  Fletcher's,  the  result  of 
disappointed  hopes,  and  a  sense  of  injury  for  having 
been  refused  a  fellowship  at  King's.  One  consideration 
which  remains  to  be  mentioned  would  alone  be  de- 
cisive in  favour  of  this  view.  A  fellowship  required 
orders.  Milton  had  been  intended  for  the  church,  and 
had  been  sent  to  college  with  that  view.  By  the 
time  he  left  Cambridge,  at  twenty-four,  it  had  become 
clear,  both  to  himself  and  his  family,  that  he  could 
never  submit  his  understanding  to  the  trammels  of  church 
formularies.  His  later  mind,  about  1641,  is  expressed 
by  himself  in  his  own  forcible  style, — "The  church,  to 
whose  service  by  the  intention  of  my  parents  and  friends 
I  was  destined  of  a  child,  and  in  mine  own  resolutions, 
till  coming  to  some  maturity  of  years,  and  perceiving 
wli;it  tyranny  had  invaded  in  the  church,  that  he  who 
would  take  orders  must  subscribe  slave,  and  take  an  oatli 
withal.  ...  I  thought  it  better  to  prefer  a  blameless 
silence  before  the  sacred  office  of  speaking,  bought  and 
begun  with  servitude  and  forswearing."     When  he  took 


i.]  AT  CAMBRIDGE.  11 

leave  of  the  university,  in  1G32,  he  had  perhaps  not 
developed  this  distinct  antipathy  to  the  establishment. 
For  in  a  letter,  preserved  in  Trinity  College,  and  written 
in  the  winter  of  1631-32,  he  does  not  put  forward  any 
conscientious  objections  to  the  clerical  profession,  but 
only  apologises  to  the  friend  to  whom  the  letter  is 
addressed,  for  delay  in  making  choice  of  some  profession. 
The  delay  itself  sprung  from  an  unconscious  distaste.  In 
a  mind  of  the  consistent  texture  of  Milton's,  motives  are 
secretly  influential  before  they  emerge  in  consciousness. 
Wo  shall  not  be  wrong  in  asserting  that  when  he  left 
Cambridge  in  1G32,  it  was  already  impossible,  in  the 
nature  of  things,  that  he  should  have  taken  orders  in  the 
Church  of  England,  or  a  fellowship  of  which  orders  were 
a  condition. 


CHAPTER  II. 

RESIDENCE    AT     UORTON — L'ALLEGRO — IL     PENSEROSO — AR- 
CADES— COMUS — LYCIDAS. 

Milton  had  been  sent  to  college  to  qualify  for  a  profession. 
The  church,  the  first  intended,  he  had  gradually  dis- 
covered to  be  incompatible.  Of  the  law,  either  his 
father's  branch,  or  some  other,  he  seems  to  have  enter- 
tained a  thought,  but  to  have  speedily  dismissed  it.  So 
at  the  age  of  twenty-four  he  returned  to  his  father's  house, 
bringing  nothing  with  him  but  his  education  and  a  silent 
purpose.  The  elder  Milton  had  now  retired  from  busi- 
ness, with  sufficient  means  but  not  with  wealth.  Though 
John  was  the  eldest  son,  there  were  two  other  children, 
a  brother,  Christopher,  and  a  sister,  Anne.  To  have  no 
profession,  even  a  nominal  one,  to  be  above  trade  and 
below  the  status  of  scprire  or  yeoman,  and  to  come  home 
with  the  avowed  object  of  leading  an  idle  life,  was 
conduct  which  required  justification.  Milton  felt  it  to  be 
so.  In  a  letter  addressed,  in  1G32,  to  some  senior  friend 
at  Cambridge,  name  unknown,  he  thanks  him  for  being 
"  a  good  watchman  to  admonish  that  the  hours  of  the  night 
pass  on,  for  so  I  call  my  life  as  yet  obscure  and  unser- 
viceable  to  mankind,  and  that  the  day  with  me  is  at  hand, 


en.  ir.]  RESIDENCE  AT  HORTON.  13 

wherein  Christ  commands  all  to  labour."  Milton  has  no 
misgivings.  He  knows  that  what  he  is  doing  with  him- 
self is  the  best  he  can  do.  His  aim  is  far  above  bread- 
winning,  and  therefore  his  probation  must  be  long.  He 
destines  for  himself  no  indolent  tarrying  in  the  garden  of 
Armida.  His  is  a  "mind  made  and  set  wholly  on  the 
accomplishment  of  greatest  things."  He  knows  that  the 
looker-on  will  hardly  accept  his  apology  for  "  being  late," 
that  it  is  in  order  to  being  "  more  fit."  Yet  it  is  the  only 
apology  he  can  offer.  And  he  is  dissatisfied  with  his  own 
progress.  "  I  am  something  suspicious  of  myself,  and  do 
take  notice  of  a  certain  belatedness  in  me." 

Of  this  frame  of  mind  the  record  is  the  second  sonnet, 
lines  which  are  an  inseparable  part  of  Milton's  biography — 

How  soon  hath  Time,  the  subtle  thief  of  youth, 

Stol'n  on  his  wing  my  three-and-twentieth  year ! 
My  hasting  days  fly  on  with  full  career, 

But  my  late  spring  no  bud  or  blossom  shew'th. 

Perhaps  my  semblance  might  deceive  the  truth 
That  I  to  manhood  am  arrived  so  near, 
And  inward  ripeness  doth  much  less  appear, 

That  some  more  timely-happy  spirits  endu'th. 

Yet,  be  it  less  or  more,  or  soon  or  slow, 

It  shall  be  still  in  strictest  measure  even 
To  that  same  lot,  however  mean  or  high, 

Toward  which  Time  leads  me,  and  the  will  of  Heaven. 
All  is,  if  I  have  grace  to  use  it  so, 
As  ever  in  my  great  Taskmaster's  eye. 

With  aspirations  thus  vast,  though  unformed,  with 
"  amplitude  of  mind  to  greatest  deeds,"  Milton  retired  to 
his  father's  house  in  the  country.  Five  more  years  of 
self-education,  added  to  the  seven  years  of  academical 
residence,  wrere  not  too  much  for  the  meditation  of  pro- 
jects such  as  Milton  was  already  conceiving.     Years  many 


li  FIRST  TEHIOD.     1C0S-1G39.  [chap. 

more  than  twelve,  filled  with  great  events  and  distracting 
interests,  were  to  pass  over  before  the  body  and  shape  of 
Paradise  Lost  was  given  to  these  imaginings. 

The  country  retirement  in  which  the  elder  Milton  had 
fixed  himself  was  the  little  village  of  Horton,  situated  in 
that  southernmost  angle  of  the  county  of  Buckingham, 
winch  insinuates  itself  between  Berks  and  Middlesex. 
Though  London  was  outy  about  seventeen  miles  distant, 
it  was  the  London  of  Charles  I.,  with  its  population  of 
.some  300,000  only;  before  coaches  and  macadamised 
roads;  while  the  Colne,  which  flows  through  the  village, 
wis  still  a  river,  and  not  the  kennel  of  a  paper-mill. 
There  was  no  lack  of  water  and  wood,  meadow  and  pas- 
ture, closes  and  open  field,  with  the  regal  towers  of 
Windsor  "bosorn'd  high  in  tufted  trees,"  to  crown  the 
landscape.  Unbroken  leisure,  solitude,  tranquillity  of 
mind,  surrounded  by  the  thickets  and  woods,  which  Pliny 
thought  indispensable  to  poetical  meditation  (Epist.  9.  10), 
no  poet's  career  was  ever  commenced  under  mure  favour- 
able auspices.  The  youth  of  Milton  stands  in  strong 
contrast  with  the  misery,  turmoil,  chance  medley,  struggle 
with  poverty,  or  abandonment  to  dissipation,  which 
blighted  the  early  years  of  so  many  of  our  men  of  letters. 

Milton's  life  is  a  drama  in  three  acts.  The  first  dis- 
covers him  in  the  calm  and  peaceful  retirement  of  Horton, 
of  which  L'Allegro,  II  Penseroso,  and  l/ycidas  are  the 
expression.  In  the  second  act  he  is  breathing  the  foul 
and  heated  atmosphere  of  party  passion  and  religious 
hate,  generating  the  lurid  tires  which  glare  in  the  bat- 
tailous canticles  of  his  prose  pamphlets.  The  three  great 
poems,  Paradise  Lost,  Paradise  Regained,  and  iS"/i>.^nn 
Agonistes,  an;  the  utterance  of  his  final  period  of  solitary 
and  Promethean  grandeur,  when,  blind,  destitute,  friend- 


ii.]  RESIDENCE  AT  HORTON.  15 

less,  he  testified  of  righteousness,  temperance,  and  judg- 
ment to  come,  alone  before  a  fallen  world. 

In  this  delicious  retirement  of  Horton,  in  alternate 
communing  with  nature  and  with  books,  for  five  years  of 
persevering  study  he  laid  in  a  stock,  not  of  learning,  but 
of  what  is  far  above  learning,  of  wide  and  accurate  know- 
ledge. Of  the  man  whose  profession  is  learning,  it  is 
characteristic  that  knowledge  is  its  own  end,  and  research 
its  own  reward.  To  MUton  all  knowledge,  all  life,  virtue 
itself,  was  already  only  a  means  to  a  further  end.  He  will 
know  only  "  that  which  is  of  use  to  know,"  and  by  useful, 
he  meant  that  which  conduced  to  form  him  for  his  vocation 
of  poet. 

From  a  very  early  period  Milton  had  taken  poetry  to 
be  his  vocation,  in  the  most  solemn  and  earnest  mood. 
The  idea  of  this  devotion  was  the  shaping  idea  of  his  life. 
It  was,  indeed,  a  bent  of  nature,  with  roots  drawing 
from  deeper  strata  of  character  than  any  act  of  reasoned 
will,  which  kept  him  out  of  the  professions,  and  now  fixed 
him,  a  seeming  idler,  but  really  hard  at  work,  in  his 
father's  house  at  Horton.  The  intimation  which  he  had 
given  of  his  purpose  in  the  sonnet  above  quoted  had  be- 
come, in  1611,  "an  inward  prompting  which  grows  daily 
upon  me,  that  by  labour  and  intent  study,  which  I  take  to 
be  my  portion  in  this  life,  joined  with  the  strong  propen- 
sity of  nature,  I  might  perhaps  leave  something  so  written 
to  after  times,  as  they  should  not  willingly  let  it  die." 

"What  the  ultimate  form  of  his  poetic  utterance  shall  be, 
he  is  in  no  hurry  to  decide.  He  will  be  "  long  choosing," 
and  quite  content  to  be  "  beginning  late."  All  his  care 
at  present  is  to  qualify  himself  for  the  lofty  function  to 
which  he  aspires.  No  lawyer,  physician,  statesman,  ever 
laboured   to   fit  himself  for  his  profession  harder   than 


16  FIRST  PERIOD.     1G08— 1639.  [chap. 

Milton  strove  to  qualify  himself  for  Lis  vocation  of  poet. 
Verse-making  is,  to  the  wits,  a  game  of  ingenuity  ;  to 
Milton,  it  is  a  prophetic  office,  towards  which,  the  will 
of  heaven  leads  him.  The  creation  he  contemplates  will 
not  flow  from  him  as  the  stanzas  of  the  Gerusalemme  did 
from  Tasso  at  twenty-one.  Before  he  can  make  a  poem, 
Milton  will  make  himself.  "I  was  confirmed  in  this 
opinion,  that  he  who  would  not  he  frustrated  of  his  hope 
to  write  well  hereafter  in  laudable  things  oucrht  himself  to 
he  a  true  poem  ....  not  presuming  to  sing  high  praises 
of  heroic  men  or  famous  cities,  unless  he  have  in  himself 
the  experience  and  practice  of  all  that  which  is  praise- 
worthy." 

Of  the  spontaneity,  the  abandon,  which  are  supposed 
to  he  characteristic  of  the  poetical  nature,  there  is  nothing 
here  ;  all  is  moral  purpose,  precision,  self-dedication.  So 
he  acquires  all  knowledge,  not  for  knowledge'  sake,  from 
the  instinct  of  learning,  the  necessity  for  completeness, 
hut  because  he  is  to  be  a  poet.  Nor  will  he  only  have 
knowledge,  he  will  have  wisdom ;  moral  development  shall 
go  hand  in  hand  with  intellectual.  A  poet's  soul  should 
"  contain  of  good,  wise,  just,  the  perfect  shape."  He  will 
cherish  continually  a  pure  mind  in  a  pure  body.  "  I 
argued  to  myself  that,  if  unchastity  in  a  woman,  whom 
St.  Paul  terms  the  glory  of  man,  be  such  a  scandal  and 
dishonour,  then  certainly  in  a  man,  who  is  both  the 
image  and  glory  of  God,  it  must,  though  commonly  not 
so  thought,  be  much  more  deflouring  and  dishonourable." 
There  is  yet  a  third  constituent  of  the  poetical  nature  ;  to 
knowledge  and  to  virtue  must  be  added  religion.  For  it 
is  from  God  that  the  poet's  thoughts  come.  "This  is 
not  to  be  obtained  but  by  devout  prayer  to  that  Eternal 
Spirit  that  can  enrich  with  all  utterance  and  knowledge, 


II.]  RESIDENCE  AT  HORTON.  17 

and  sends  out  his  seraphim  with  the  hallowed  fire  of 
his  altar,  to  touch  and  purify  the  life  of  whom  he 
pleases.  To  this  must  be  added  industrious  and  select 
reading,  steady  observation,  and  insight  into  all  seemly 
and  generous  acts  and  affairs  ;  till  which  in  some  measure 
be  compast,  I  refuse  not  to  sustain  this  expectation." 
Before  the  piety  of  this  vow,  Dr.  Johnson's  morosity 
yields  for  a  moment,  and  he  is  forced  to  exclaim,  "  From 
a  promise  like  this,  at  once  fervid,  pious,  and  rational, 
might  be  expected  the  Paradise  Lost." 

Of  these  years  of  self-cultivation,  of  conscious  moral 
architecture,  such  as  Plato  enacted  for  his  ideal  State,  but 
none  but  Milton  ever  had  the  courage  to  practise,  the 
biographer  would  gladly  give  a  minute  account.  But  the 
means  of  doing  so  are  wanting.  The  poet  kept  no  diary 
of  his  reading,  such  as  some  great  students,  e.  g.  Isaac 
Casaubon,  have  left.  JSTor  could  such  a  record,  had  it 
been  attempted,  have  shown  us  the  secret  process  by 
which  the  scholar's  dead  learning  was  transmuted  in 
Milton's  mind  into  living  imagery.  "  Many  studious  and 
contemplative  years,  altogether  spent  in  the  search  of  re- 
ligious and  civil  knowledge  "  is  his  own  description  of  the 
period.  "  You  make  many  inquiries  as  to  what  I  am 
about;"  he  writes  to  Diodati — "what  am  I  thinking  of? 
Why,  with  God's  help,  of  immortality !  Forgive  the 
word,  I  only  whisper  it  in  your  ear  !  Yes,  I  am  pluming 
my  wings  for  a  flight."  This  was  in  1637,  at  the  end  of 
five  years  of  the  Horton  probation.  The  poems,  whicb, 
rightly  read,  are  strewn  with  autobiographical  hints,  are 
not  silent  as  to  the  intention  of  this  period.  In  Paradise 
Regained  (i.  196),  Milton  reveals  himself.  And  in 
Comns,  written  at  Horton,  the  lines  375  and  following 
are  charged  with  the  same  sentiment, — 

0 


18  FIRST  PERIOD.     1C0S-1G39.  [chap. 

And  wisdom's  self 
Oft  seeks  to  sweet  retired  solitude, 
"Where,  with  her  best  nurse,  contemplation, 
She  plumes  her  feathers,  and  lets  grow  her  wings, 
That  in  the  various  bustle  of  resort 
Were  all-to  ruffled  and  sometimes  impair'd. 

That  at  Horton  Milton  "read  all  the  Greek  and  Latin 
writers  "  is  one  of  Johnson's  careless  versions  of  Milton's 
own  words,  "  enjoyed  a  complete  holiday  in  turning  over 
Latin  and  Greek  authors."  Milton  read,  not  as  a  pro- 
fessional philologian,  but  as  a  poet  and  scholar,  and  always 
in  the  light  of  his  secret  purpose.  It  was  not  in  his  way 
to  sit  down  to  read  over  all  the  Greek  and  Latin  writers, 
as  Casaubon  or  Salmasius  might  do.  Milton  read  with 
selection,  and  "  meditated,"  says  Aubrey,  what  he  read. 
His  practice  conformed  to  the  principle  he  has  himself 
laid  down  in  the  often-quoted  lines  {Paradise  Regained, 

iv.  322)— 

Who  reads 

Incessantly,  and  to  his  reading  brings  not 

A  spirit  and  judgment  equal  or  superior, 

Uncertain  and  unsettled  still  remains, 

Deep  vers'd  in  books,  and  shallow  in  himself. 

Some  of  Milton's  Greek  books  have  been  traced  ;  his 
Aratus,  Lycophron,  Euripides  (the  Stephanus  of  1602), 
and  his  Pindar  (the  Benedictus  of  1G20),  are  still  extant, 
with  marginal  memoranda,  which  should  seem  to  evince 
careful  and  discerning  reading.  One  critic  even  thought 
it  worth  while  to  accuse  Joshua  Barnes  of  silently  appro- 
priating conjectural  emendations  from  Milton's  Euripides. 
But  Milton's  own  poems  are  the  best  evidence  of  his 
familiarity  with  all  that  is  most  choice  in  the  remains  of 
classic  poetry.  Though  the  commentators  are  accused  of 
often  seeing  an  imitation  where  there  is  none,  no  com- 


II.]  RESIDENCE  AT  HORTON.  19 

mentary  can  point  out  the  ever-present  infusion  of  clas- 
sical flavour,  which  bespeaks  intimate  converse  far  more 
than  direct  adaptation.  Milton's  classical  allusions,  says 
Hartley  Coleridge,  are  amalgamated  and  consubstantiated 
with  his  native  thought. 

A  commonplace  book  of  Milton's,  after  having  lurked 
unsuspected  for  200  years  in  the  archives  of  Netherby, 
has  been  disinterred  in  our  own  day  (1874).  It  appears 
to  belong  partly  to  the  end  of  the  Horton  period.  It  is 
not  by  any  means  an  account  of  all  that  he  is  reading, 
but  only  an  arrangement,  under  certain  heads,  or  places 
of  memoranda  for  future  use.  These  notes  are  extracted 
from  about  eighty  different  authors,  Greek,  Latin,  French, 
Italian,  and  English.  Of  Greek  authors  no  less  than 
sixteen  are  quoted.  The  notes  are  mostly  notes  of  his- 
torical facts,  seldom  of  thoughts,  never  of  mere  verbal 
expression.  There  is  no  trace  in  it  of  any  intention  to 
store  up  either  the  imagery  or  the  language  of  poetry.  It 
may  be  that  such  notes  were  made  and  entered  in  another 
volume  ;  for  the  book  thus  accidentally  preserved  to  us 
seems  to  refer  to  other  similar  volumes  of  collections. 
But  it  is  more  likely  that  no  such  poetical  memoranda 
were  ever  made,  and  that  Milton  trusted  entirely  to 
memory  for  the  wealth  of  classical  allusion  with  which 
his  verse  is  surcharged.  He  did  not  extract  from  the 
poets  and  the  great  writers  whom  he  was  daily  turning 
over,  but  only  from  the  inferior  authors  and  secondary 
historians,  which  he  read  only  once.  Most  of  the  material 
collected  in  the  commonplace  book  is  used  in  his  prose 
pamphlets.  But  when  so  employed  the  facts  are  worked 
into  the  texture  of  his  argument,  rather  than  cited  as 
extraneous  witnesses. 

In  reading  history  it  was  his  aim  to  get  at  a  conspectus  of 

c  2 


20  FIRST  PERIOD.     1G0S-1639.  [chap. 

the  general  current  of  affairs  rather  than  to  study  minutely 
a  special  period.  He  tells  Diodati  in  September,  1637, 
that  he  has  studied  Greek  history  continuously,  from  the 
beginning  to  the  fall  of  Constantinople.  When  he  tells 
the  same  friend  that  he  has  been  long  involved  in  the 
obscurity  of  the  early  middle  ages  of  Italian  History  down 
to  the  time  of  the  Emperor  Eudolph,  we  learn  from  the 
commonplace  book  that  he  had  only  been  reading  the  one 
volume  of  Sigonius's  Hlstoria  Regni  Italici.  From  the 
thirteenth  century  downwards  he  proposes  to  himself  to 
study  each  Italian  state  in  some  separate  history.  Even 
before  his  journey  to  Italy  he  read  Italian  with  as  much 
ease  as  French.  He  tells  us  that  it  was  by  his  father's  ad- 
vice that  he  had  acquired  these  modern  languages.  But  we 
can  see  that  they  Avere  essential  parts  of  his  own  scheme 
of  self  education,  which  included,  in  another  direction 
Hebrew,  both  Biblical  and  Eabbinical,  and  even  Syriac. 

The  intensity  of  his  nature  showed  itself  in  his  method 
of  study.  He  read,  not  desultorily,  a  bit  here  and 
another  there,  but  "when  I  take  up  with  a  thing,  I 
never  pause  or  break  it  off,  nor  am  drawn  away  from  it 
by  any  other  interest,  till  I  have  arrived  at  the  goal  I 
proposed  to  myself."  He  made  breaks  occasionally  in 
this  routine  of  study  by  visits  to  London,  to  see  friends 
to  buy  books,  to  take  lessons  in  mathematics,  to  go  to  the 
theatre,  or  to  concerts.  A  love  of  music  was  inherited 
from  his  father. 

I  have  called  this  period,  1632-39,  one  of  preparation, 
and  not  of  production.  But  though  the  first  volume  of 
poems  printed  by  Milton  did  not  appear  till  1615,  the 
most  considerable  part  of  its  contents  was  written  during 
the  period  included  in  the  present  chapter. 

The  fame  of  the  author  of  Paradise  Led  has  over- 


II.]  COMUS.  21 

shadowed  that  of  the  author  of  L' Allegro,  11  Penseroso, 
and  Lycidas.  Yet  had  Paradise  Lost  never  been 
written,  these  three  poems,  with  Comus,  would  have 
sufficed  to  place  their  author  in  a  class  apart,  and  above 
all  those  who  had  used  the  English  language  for  poetical 
purposes  before  him.  It  is  incumbent  on  Milton's  bio- 
grapher to  relate  the  circumstances  of  the  composition  of 
Comus,  as  it  is  an  incident  in  the  life  of  the  poet. 

Milton's  musical  tastes  had  brought  him  the  acquain- 
tance of  Henry  Lawes,  at  that  time  the  most  celebrated 
composer  in  England.  "When  the  Earl  of  Bridgewater 
would  give  an  entertainment  at  Ludlow  Castle  to  celebrate 
his  entry  upon  his  office  as  President  of  Wales  and  the 
Marches,  it  was  to  Lawes  that  application  was  made  to 
furnish  the  music.  Lawes,  as  naturally,  applied  to  his 
young  poetical  acquaintance  Milton,  to  write  the  words. 
The  entertainment  was  to  be  of  that  sort  which  was 
fashionable  at  court,  and  was  called  a  Mask.  In  that 
brilliant  period  of  court  life  which  was  inaugurated  by 
Elisabeth  and  put  an  end  to  by  the  Civil  War,  a  Mask 
was  a  frequent  and  favourite  amusement.  It  was  an 
exhibition  in  which  pageantry  and  music  predominated, 
but  in  which  dialogue  was  introduced  as  accompaniment 
or  explanation. 

The  dramatic  Mask  of  the  sixteenth  century  has  been 
traced  by  the  antiquaries  as  far  back  as  the  time  of 
Edward  III.  But  in  its  perfected  shape  it  was  a  genuine 
offspring  of  the  English  renaissance,  a  cross  between  the 
vernacular  mummery,  or  mystery-play,  and  the  Greek 
drama.  ISTo  great  court  festival  was  considered  complete 
without  such  a  public  show.  Many  of  our  great  dramatic 
writers,  Beaumont,  Fletcher,  Ben  Jonson,  Middleton, 
Dekker,  Shirley,  Carew,  were  constrained  by  the  fashion 


22  FIRST  PERIOD.     1G0S— 1G39.  [chap. 

of  the  time  to  apply  their  invention  to  gratify  this  taste 
for  decorative  representation.  No  less  an  artist  than 
Inigo  Jones  must  occasionally  stoop  to  construct  the 
machinery. 

The  taste  for  grotesque  pageant  in  the  open  air  must 
have  gradually  died  out  hefore  the  general  advance  of 
refinement.  The  Mask  hy  a  process  of  evolution  would 
have  "become  the  Opera.  But  it  often  happens  that  when 
a  taste  or  fashion  is  at  the  point  of  death,  it  undergoes 
a  forced  and  temporary  revival.  So  it  was  with  the 
Mask.  In  1633,  the  Puritan  hatred  to  the  theatre  had 
blazed  out  in  Prynne's  Ilislriomastix,  and  as  a  natural 
consequence,  the  loyal  and  cavalier  portion  of  society 
threw  itself  into  dramatic  amusements  of  every  kind. 
It  was  an  unreal  revival  of  the  Mask,  stimulated  by 
political  passion,  in  the  wane  of  genuine  taste  for  the 
fantastic  and  semi-barbarous  pageant,  in  which  the  former 
age  had  delighted.  "What  the  imagination  of  the  specta- 
tors was  no  longer  equal  to,  was  to  be  supplied  by  costli- 
ness of  dress  and  scenery.  These  last  representations  of 
the  expiring  Mask  were  the  occasions  of  an  extravagant 
outlay.  The  Inns  of  Court  and  Whitehall  vied  with 
each  other  in  the  splendour  and  solemnity  with  which 
they  brought  out,— the  Lawyers,  Shirley's  Triumph  of 
Peace, — the  Court,  Carew's  Caelum  BHtannicum. 

It  was  a  strange  caprice  of  fortune  that  made  the  future 
poet  of  the  Puritan  epic  the  last  composer  of  a  cavalier 
mask.  The  slight  plot,  or  story,  of  Comus  was  probably 
suggested  to  Milton  by  his  recollection  of  George  Peele's 
Old  Wives'  Tale,  which  he  may  have  seen  on  the 
stage.  The  personage  of  Comus  was  borrowed  from  a 
Latin  extravaganza  by  a  Dutch  professor,  whose  Comus 
was  reprinted  at  Oxford  in  1(53-1,  the  very  year  in  which 


ii.]  COMUS.  23 

Milton  wrote  his  Mask.  The  so-called  tradition  col- 
lected by  Oldys,  of  the  young  Egertons,  who  acted  in 
Comus,  having  lost  themselves  in  Haywood  Forest  on 
their  way  to  Ludlow,  obviously  grew  out  of  Milton's 
poem.  However  casual  the  suggestion,  or  unpromising 
the  occasion,  Milton  worked  out  of  it  a  strain  of  poetry 
such  as  had  never  been  heard  in  England  before.  If  any 
reader  wishes  to  realise  the  immense  step  upon  what  had 
gone  before  him,  which  was  now  made  by  a  young  man 
of  twenty-seven,  he  should  turn  over  some  of  the  most 
celebrated  of  the  masks  of  the  Jacobean  period. 

We  have  no  information  how  Comus  was  received 
when  represented  at  Ludlow,  but  it  found  a  public  of 
readers.  For  Lawes,  who  had  the  MS.  in  his  hands,  was 
so  importuned  for  copies  that,  in  1637,  he  caused  an 
edition  to  be  printed  off.  Not  surreptitiously ;  for  though 
Lawes  does  not  say,  in  the  dedication  to  Lord  Brackley, 
that  he  had  the  author's  leave  to  print,  we  are  sure  that 
he  had  it,  only  from  the  motto.  On  the  title  page  of  this 
edition  (1637),  is  the  line, — 

Eheu !  quid  volui  misero  mihi !  floribus  austrura 
Perditus — 

The  words  are  Virgil's,  but  the  appropriation  of  them, 
and  their  application  in  this  "second  intention"  is  too 
exquisite  to  have  been  made  by  any  but  Milton. 

To  the  poems  of  the  Horton  period  belong  also  the 
two  pieces  U  Allegro  and  II  Penseroso,  and  Lycidas.  He 
Avas  probably  in  the  early  stage  of  acquiring  the  language, 
when  he  superscribed  the  two  first  poems  with  their 
Italian  titles.  For  there  is  no  such  word  as  "Penseroso," 
the  adjective  formed  from  "Pensiero  "  being  "pensieroso." 
Even  had  the  word  been  written  correctly,  its   significa- 


24  FIRST  PERIOD.     160S— 1639.  [cnAP. 

tion  is  not  that  which  Milton  intended,  viz.  thoughtful, 
or  contemplative,  but  anxious,  full  of  cares,  cart- 
ing. The  rapid  purification  of  Milton's  taste  will  be 
best  perceived  by  comparing  L?  Allegro  and  II  Pense- 
roso  of  uncertain  date,  but  written  after  1632,  with 
the  Ode  on  the  Nativity,  written  1629.  The  Ode,  not- 
withstanding its  foretaste  of  Milton's  grandeur,  abounds  in 
frigid  conceits,  from  which  the  two  later  pieces  are 
free.  The  Ode  is  frosty,  as  written  in  winter,  within  the 
four  walls  of  a  college  chamber.  The  two  idylls  breathe 
the  free  air  of  spring  and  summer,  and  of  the  fields  round 
Horton.  They  are  thoroughly  naturalistic ;  the  choicest 
expression  our  language  has  yet  found  of  the  fresh  charm 
of  country  life,  not  as  that  life  is  lived  by  the  peasant, 
but  as  it  is  felt  by  a  young  and  lettered  student,  issuing 
at  early  dawn,  or  at  sunset,  into  the  fields  from  his 
chamber  and  his  books.  All  rural  sights  and  sounds  and 
smells  are  here  blended  in  that  ineifable  combination, 
which  once  or  twice  perhaps  in  our  lives  has  saluted  our 
young  senses  before  their  perceptions  were  blunted  by 
alcohol,  by  lust,  or  ambition,  or  diluted  by  the  social 
distractions  of  great  cities. 

The  fidelity  to  nature  of  the  imagery  of  these  poems 
has  been  impugned  by  the  critics. 

Then  to  come,  in  spito  of  sorrow, 
And  at  my  window  bid  good  morrow. 

The  skylark  never  approaches  human  habitations  in  this 
way,  as  the  redbreast  does.  Mr.  Masson  replies  that  the 
subject  of  the  verb  "to  come"  is,  not  the  skylark,  but 
L'AUegro,  the  joyous  student.  I  cannot  construe  the 
lines  as  Mr.  Masson  does,  even  though  the  consequence 
were  to  convict  Milton,  a  city-bred  youth,  of  not  knowing 
a  skylark  from  a  sparrow  when  he  saw  it.  A  close 
observer   of  things  around   us  would  not  speak  of  the 


ii.]  L'ALLEGRO  AND  IL  PENSEROSO.  25 

eglantine  as  twisted,  of  the  cowslip  as  wan,  of  the 
violet  as  glowing,  or  of  the  reed  as  balmy.  Lycidas' 
laureate  hearse  is  to  be  strewn  at  once  with  primrose  and 
woodbine,  daffodil  and  jasmine.  When  Ave  read  "the 
rathe  primrose  that  forsaken  dies,"  we  see  that  the  poet 
is  recollecting  Shakespeare  (Winter's  Tale,  4.  4),  not 
looking  at  the  primrose.  The  pine  is  not  "  rooted  deep 
as  high"  (P.  P.  4416),  but  sends  its  roots  along  the 
surface.  The  elm,  one  of  the  thinnest  foliaged  trees  of 
the  forest,  is  inappropriately  named  starproof  (Arc.  89). 
Lightning  does  not  singe  the  tops  of  trees  (P.  L.  i.  613), 
but  either  shivers  them,  or  cuts  a  groove  down  the  stem 
to  the  ground.  These  and  other  such  like  inaccuracies 
must  be  set  down  partly  to  conventional  language  used 
witho\it  meaning,  the  vice  of  Latin  versification  enforced 
as  a  task,  but  they  are  partly  due  to  real  defect  of  natural 
knowledge. 

Other  objections  of  the  critics  on  the  same  score, 
which  may  be  met  with,  are  easily  dismissed.  The 
objector,  who  can  discover  no  reason  why  the  oak  should 
be  styled  "  monumental,"  meets  with  his  match  in  the 
defender  who  suggests,  that  it  may  be  rightly  so  called 
because  monuments  in  churches  are  made  of  oak.  I 
should  tremble  to  have  to  offer  an  explanation  to  critics 
of  Milton  so  acute  as  these  two.  But  of  less  ingenious 
readers  I  would  ask,  if  any  single  word  can  be  found 
ecpial  to  "  monumental "  in  its  power  of  suggesting  to 
the  imagination  the  historic  oak  of  park  or  chase,  up  to 
the  knees  in  fern,  which  has  outlasted  ten  generations  of 
men  ;  has  been  the  mute  witness  of  the  scenes  of  love, 
treachery,  or  violence  enacted  in  the  baronial  hall  which 
it  shadows  and  protects ;  and  has  been  so  associated  with 
man,  that  it  is  now  rather  a  column  and  memorial  obelisk 
than  a  tree  of  the  forest  1 


26  FIRST  PERIOD.     1608— 1639.  [chap. 

These  are  the  humours  of  criticism.     But,  apart  from 
these,   a  naturalist   is    at    once    aware    that   Milton   had 
neither  the  eye  nor  the  ear  of  a  naturalist.     At  no  time, 
even  before  his  loss  of  sight,  was  he  an  exact  observer 
of  natural  objects.     It  may  be  that  he  knew  a  skylark 
from  a  redbreast,  and  did  not  confound  the  dog-rose  with 
the  honeysuckle.     But   I  am    sure   that   he    had   never 
acquired  that  interest  in  nature's  things  and  ways,  which 
Leads  to  close  and  loving  watching  of  them.     He  had  not 
that  sense  of  outdoor  nature,  empirical  and  not  scientific, 
which  endows  the  Angler   of  his   cotemporary   Walton, 
with    its    enduring  charm,   and  which  is  to  be  acquired 
only  by  living  in  the  open  country  in  childhood.     Milton 
is  not  a  man  of  the  fields,  but  of  books.     His  life  is  in 
his  study,   and   when   he  steps  abroad  into  the  air    he 
carries  his  study  thoughts  with  him.     He  does  look  at 
nature,   but   he   sees   her  through   books.     Natural   im- 
pressions are  received  from  without,  but  always  in  those 
forms  of  beautiful  speech,  in  which  the  poets  of  all  ages 
have  clothed  them.    His  epithets  are  not,  like  the  epithets 
of  the  school  of  Dryden  and  Pope,  culled  from  the  Gfradus 
ad  Parnassum  ;  they  are  expressive  of  some  reality,  but  it 
is  of  a  real  emotion  in  the  spectator's  soul,  not  of  any 
quality  detected  by  keen  insight  in  the  objects  themselves. 
This  emotion  Milton's  art  stamps  with  an  epithet,  which 
shall  convey  the  added  charm  of  classical  reminiscence. 
When,  e.g.,  he  speaks   of   "the  wand'ring  moon,"  the 
original  significance  of  the  epithet   comes  home  to  the 
scholarly  reader  with  the  enhanced  effect  of  its  association 
with  the  "  errantem  lunam  "  of  Virgil.     Xor  because  it 
is  adopted  from  Virgil  has  the  epithet  here  the  second- 
hand effect  of  a  copy.     If  Milton  sees  nature  through 
books,  he  still  sees  it. 


ii.]       L' ALLEGRO  AND  IL   PENSEROSO.        27 

To  behold  the  wand'ring  moon, 
Riding  near  her  highest  noon, 
Like  one  that  had  been  led  astray, 
Through  the  heaven's  wide  pathless  way, 
And  oft,  as  if  her  head  she  bow'd, 
Stooping  through  a  fleecy  cloud. 

No  allegation  that  "  wand'ring  moon  "  is  borrowed  from 
Horace  can  hide  from  us  that  Milton,  though  he  remem- 
bered Horace,  had  watched  the  phenomenon  with  a  feel- 
ing so,intense  that  he  projected  his  own  soul's  throb  into 
the  object  before  him,  and  named  it  with  what  Thomson 
calls  "  recollected  love." 

Milton's  attitude  towards  nature  is  not  that  of  a  scien- 
tific naturalist,  nor  even  that  of  a  close  observer.  It  is 
that  of  a  poet  who  feels  its  total  influence  too  powerfully 
to  dissect  it.  If,  as  I  have  said,  Milton  reads  books  first 
and  nature  afterwards,  it  is  not  to  test  nature  by  his 
books,  but  to  learn  from  both.  He  is  learning  not  books, 
but  from  books.  All  he  reads,  sees,  hears,  is  to  him  but 
nutriment  for  the  soul.  He  is  making  himself.  Man  is 
to  him  the  highest  object ;  nature  is  subordinate  to  man, 
not  only  in  its  more  vulgar  uses,  but  as  an  excitant  of 
fine  emotion.  He  is  not  concerned  to  register  the  facts 
and  phenomena  of  nature,  but  to  convey  the  impressions 
they  make  on  a  sensitive  soul.  The  external  forms  of 
things  are  to  be  presented  to  us  as  transformed  through 
the  heart  and  mind  of  the  poet.  The  moon  is  endowed 
with  life  and  will,  "  stooping,"  "  riding,"  "wand'ring," 
"bowing  her  head,"  not  as  a  frigid  personification,  and 
because  the  ancient  poets  so  personified  her,  but  by  com- 
munication to  her  of  the  intense  agitation  which  the 
nocturnal  spectacle  rouses  in  the  poet's  own  breast. 

I  have  sometimes  read  that  these  two  idylls  are  "mas- 


28  FIRST  PERIOD.     1G0S— 1G39.  [chap. 

terpieces  of  description."  Other  critics  will  ask  if  in 
the  scenery  of  V  Allegro  and  II  Penseroso  Milton  has 
described  the  country  about  Horton,  in  Bucks,  or  that 
about  Forest  Hill,  in  Oxfordshire  ;  and  will  object  that  the 
Chiltern  Hills  are  not  high  enough  for  clouds  to  rest 
upon  their  top,  much  less  upon  their  breast.  But  he  has 
left  out  the  pollard  willows,  says  another  censor,  and  the 
lines  of  pollard  willow  are  the  prominent  feature  in  the 
valley  of  the  Colne,  even  more  so  than  the  "  hedgerow 
elms."  Does  the  line  "  "Walk  the  studious  cloister's  pale," 
mean  St.  Paul's  or  Westminster  Abbey  1  When  these 
things  can  continue  to  be  asked,  it  is  hardly  superfluous 
to  continue  to  repeat,  that  truth  of  fact  and  poetical  truth 
are  two  different  things.  Milton's  attitude  towards  nature 
is  not  that  of  a  "  descriptive  poet/'  if  indeed  the  phrase 
be  not  a  self-contradiction. 

In  Milton,  nature  is  not  put  forward  as  the  poet's 
theme.  His  theme  is  man,  in  the  two  contrasted  moods  of 
joyous  emotion,  or  grave  reflection.  The  shifting  scenery 
ministers  to  the  varying  mood.  Thomson,  in  the  Sea- 
sons  (1726),  sets  himself  to  render  natural  phenomena 
as  they  truly  are.  He  has  left  us  a  vivid  presentation 
in  gorgeous  language  of  the  naturalistic  calendar  of  the 
changing  year.  Milton,  in  these  two  idylls,  has  recorded  a 
d  v  of  twenty-four  hours.  But  he  has  not  registered  the 
nomcna ;  he  places  us  at  the  standpoint  of  the  man 
before  whom  they  deploy.  And  the  man,  joyous  or 
melancholy,  is  not  a  bare  spectator  of  them ;  he  is  the 
student,  compounded  of  sensibility  and  intelligence,  of 
whom  we  are  not  told  that  he  saw  so  and  so,  or  that  he 
felt  so,  but  with  whom  we  are  made  copartners  of  his 
thoughts  and  feeling.  Description  melts  into  emotion, 
and    contemplation   bodies    itself    in    imagery.     Ail    the 


ii.]  LYCIDAS.  29 

charm  of  rural  life  is  there,  hut  it  is  not  tendered  to  us 
in  the  form  of  a  landscape ;  the  scenery  is  subordinated 
to  the  human  figure  in  the  centre. 

These  two  short  idylls  are  marked  by  a  gladsome  spon- 
taneity which  never  came  to  Milton  again.  The  delicate 
fancy  and  feeling  which  play  about  V Allegro  and  II 
Penseroso  never  reappear,  and  form  a  strong  contrast  to 
the  austere  imaginings  of  his  later  poetical  period.  These 
two  poems  have  the  freedom  and  frolic,  the  natural  grace 
of  movement,  the  improvisation,  of  the  hest  Elizabethan 
examples,  while  both  thoughts  and  words  are  under  a 
strict  economy  unknown  to  the  diffuse  exuberance  of  the 
Spenserians. 

In  Lycidas  (1637)  we  have  reached  the  high- water 
mark  of  English  Poesy  and  of  Milton's  own  production. 
A  period  of  a  century  and  a  half  was  to  elapse  before 
poetry  in  England  seemed,  in  Wordsworth's  Ode  on  Im- 
mortality (1807),  to  be  rising  again  towards  the  level 
of  inspiration  which  it  had  once  attained  in  Lycidas. 
And  in  the  development  of  the  Miltonic  genius  this 
wonderful  dirge  marks  the  culminating  point.  As  the 
twin  idylls  of  1632  show  a  great  advance  upon  the  Ode 
on  the  Nativity  (1629),  the  growth  of  the  poetic  mind 
during  the  five  years  which  follow  1632  is  registered  in 
Lycidas.  Like  the  L 'Allegro  and  II  Penseroso,  Lycidas 
is  laid  out  on  the  lines  of  the  accepted  pastoral  fiction ; 
like  them  it  offers  exquisite  touches  of  idealised  rural 
life.  But  Lycidas  opens  up  a  deeper  vein  of  feeling,  a 
patriot  passion  so  vehement  and  dangerous,  that,  like 
that  which  stirred  the  Hebrew  prophet,  it  is  compelled 
to  veil  itself  from  power,  or  from  sympathy,  in  utterance 
made  purposely  enigmatical.  The  passage  which  hegins 
"  Last  came   and  last  did  go,"  raises  in   us  a  thrill   of 


30  FIRST  PERIOD.     160S— 1639.  [chap. 

awe-struck  expectation  which  I  can  only  compare  with 
that  excited  by  the  Cassandra  of  /Eschylus's  Agamem- 
non. For  the  reader  to  feel  this,  he.  must  have  present  in 
memory  the  circumstances  of  England  in  1637.  He 
must  place  himself  as  far  as  possible  in  the  situation  of  a 
cotemporary.  The  study  of  Milton's  poetry  compels  the 
study  of  his  time;  and  Professor  Masson's  six  volumes 
are  not  too  much  to  enable  us  to  understand,  that  there 
wore  real  causes  for  the  intense  passion  which  glows 
underneath  the  poet's  words — a  passion  which  unex- 
plained would  be  thought  to  be  intrusive. 

The  historical  exposition  must  be  gathered  from  the 
English  history  of  the  period,  which  may  be  read  in 
Professor  Masson's  excellent  summary.  All  I  desire  to 
point  out  here  is,  that  in  Lycidas,  Milton's  original  pic- 
turesque vein  is  for  the  first  time  crossed  with  one  of 
quite  another  sort,  stern,  determined,  obscurely  indicative 
of  suppressed  passion,  and  the  resolution  to  do  or  die. 
The  fanaticism  of  the  covenanter  and  the  sad  grace  of 
Petrarch  seem  to  meet  in  Milton's  monody.  Yet  these 
n]iposites,  instead  of  neutralising  each  other,  are  blended 
into  one  harmonious  whole  by  the  presiding,  but  invisible, 
genius  of  the  poet.  The  conflict  between  the  old  cavalier 
world — the  years  of  gaiety  and  festivity  of  a  splendid  ami 
pleasure-loving  court,  and  the  new  puritan  world  into 
v.-hich  love  and  pleasure  were  not  to  enter — this  conflict 
which  was  commencing  in  the  social  life  of  England,  is 
also  begun  in  Milton's  own  breast,  and  is  reflected  in 
I/ycida 

For  we  wero  nurs'd  upon  tho  self- same  hill. 

Hero  is  the  sweet  mournfulness  of  the  Spenserian  time, 
upon  whose  joys  Death  is  tho  only  intruder.     Pass  on- 


ii.]  LTCIDAS.  31 

ward  a  little,  and  you  are  in  presence  of  the  tremendous 

Two-handed  engine  at  the  door, 

the  terror  of  which  is  enhanced  by  its  obscurity.  "We 
are  very  sine  that  the  avenger  is  there,  though  we  know 
not  who  he  is.  In  these  thirty  lines  we  have  the  pre- 
luding mutterings  of  the  storm  which  was  to  sweep  away 
mask  and  revel  and  song,  to  inhibit  the  drama,  and 
suppress  poetry.  In  the  earlier  poems  Milton's  muse  has 
sung  in  the  tones  of  the  age  that  is  passing  away ;  the 
poet  is,  except  in  his  austere  chastity,  a  cavalier.  Though 
even  in  U Allegro  Dr.  Johnson  truly  detects  "some 
melancholy  in  his  mirth,"  In  Lycidas,iov  a  moment,  the 
tones  of  both  ages,  the  past  and  the  coming,  are  combined, 
and  then  Milton  leaves  behind  him  for  ever  the  golden 
age,  and  one  half  of  his  poetic  genius.  He  never  ful- 
filled the  promise  with  which  Lycidas  concludes,  "  To- 
morrow to  fresh  woods  and  pastures  new." 


CHAPTER  III. 

JOURNEY    TO    ITALY. 

Before  1632  Milton  had  begun  to  learn  Italian.  His 
mind,  just  then  open  on  all  sides  to  impressions  from 
hooks,  was  peculiarly  attracted  by  Italian  poetry.  The 
language  grew  to  be  loved  for  its  own  sake.  Saturated 
as  he  was  with  Dante  and  Petrarch,  Tasso  and  Ariosto, 
the  desire  arose  to  let  the  ear  drink  in  the  music  of 
Tuscan  speech. 

The  "  unhappy  gift  of  beauty,"  which  has  attracted  the 
spoder  of  all  ages  to  the  Italian  peninsula,  has  ever  exerted, 
and  still  exerts,  a  magnetic  force  on  every  cultivated  mind. 
Manifold  are  the  sources  of  this  fascination  now.  The 
scholar  and  the  artist,  the  antiquarian  and  the  historian, 
the  architect  and  the  lover  of  natural  scenery,  alike  find 
here  the  amplest  gratification  of  their  tastes.  This  is  so 
still ;  but  in  the  sixteenth  century  the  Italian  cities  were 
the  only  homes  of  an  ancient  and  decaying  civilization. 
Not  insensihle  to  other  impressions,  it  was  specially  the 
desire  of  social  converse  with  the  living  poets  and  men  of 
taste— a  feeble  generation,  but  one  still  nourishing  tho 
traditions  of  the  great  poetic  age— which  drew  Mdton 
across  the  Alps. 

In  April,   1037,   Milton's   mother  had  died;   but  his 


cii.  in]  JOURNEY  TO  ITALY.  33 

younger  brother,  Christopher,  had  come  to  live,  with  his 
wife,  in  the  paternal  home  at  Horton.  Milton,  the  father, 
was  not  unwilling  that  his  son  should  have  his  foreign  tour, 
as  a  part  of  that  elaborate  education  by  which  he  was 
qualifying  himself  for  his  doubtful  vocation.  The  cost 
was  not  to  stand  in  the  way,  considerable  as  it  must  have 
been.  Howell's  estimate,  in  his  Instructions  for  Forreine 
Travel,  1642,  was  300?.  a  year  for  the  tourist  himself, 
and  50Z.  for  his  man,  a  sum  equal  to  about  1000/.  at 
present. 

Among  the  letters  of  introduction  with  which  Milton 
provided  himself,  one  was  from  the  aged  Sir  Henry 
Wotton,  Provost  of  Eton,  in  Milton's  immediate  neigh- 
bourhood. Sir  Henry,  who  had  lived  a  long  time  in 
Italy,  impressed  upon  his  young  friend  the  importance  of 
discretion  on  the  point  of  religion,  and  told  him  the  story 
which  he  always  told  to  travellers  who  asked  his  advice. 
"At  Siena  I  was  tabled  in  the  house  of  one  Alberto 

Scipioni,  an  old  Eoman  courtier  in  dangerous  times 

At  my  departure  for  Koine  I  had  won  confidence 
enough  to  beg  his  advice  how  I  might  carry  myself 
securely  there,  without  offence  of  others,  or  of  mine  own 
conscience.  '  Signor  Arrigo  mio,'  says  he,  '  pensieri  stretti 
ed  il  viso  sciolto  (thoughts  close,  countenance  open)  will 
go  safely  over  the  whole  world.'"  Though  the  intensity 
of  the  Catholic  reaction  had  somewhat  relaxed  in  Italy, 
the  deportment  of  a  Protestant  in  the  countries  which  were 
terrorised  by  the  Inquisition  was  a  matter  which  demanded 
much  circumspection.  Sir  H.  Wotton  spoke  from  his 
own  experience  of  far  more  rigorous  times  than  those  of 
the  Barberini  Pope.  But  he  may  have  noticed,  even  in 
his  brief  acquaintance  with  Milton,  a  fearless  presumption 
of  speech  which  was  just  what  was  most   likely  to  bring 

D 


31  FIRST  PERIOD.     1608-1G39.  [chap. 

him  into  trouble.  The  event  proved  that  the  hint  was 
not  misplaced.  For  at  Rome  itself,  in  the  very  lion's 
den,  nothing  could  content  the  young  zealot  but  to  stand 
up  for  his  Protestant  creed.  Mdton  would  not  do  as 
Peter  Heylin  did,  who,  when  asked  as  to  his  religion, 
replied  that  he  was  a  Catholic,  which,  in  a  Laudian,  was 
but  a  natural  equivoque.  Milton  Avas  resolute  in  his 
religion  at  Rome,  so  much  so  that  many  were  deterred 
from  showing  him  the  civilities  they  were  prepared  to 
offer.  His  rule,  he  says,  was  "  not  of  my  own  accord  to 
introduce  in  those  places  conversation  about  religion,  but, 
if  interrogated  respecting  the  faith,  then,  whatsoever  I 
should  suffer,  to  dissemble  nothing.  "What  I  was,  if  any 
one  asked,  I  concealed  from  no  one ;  if  any  one  in  the 
very  city  of  the  Pope  attacked  the  orthodox  religion,  I 
defended  it  most  freely."  Beyond  the  statement  that  the 
English  Jesuits  Avere  indignant,  we  hear  of  no  evil  con- 
sequences of  this  imprudence.  Perhaps  the  Jesuits  saw 
that  Milton  was  of  the  stuff  that  would  welcome  mar- 
tyrdom, and  were  sick  of  the  affair  of  Galileo,  which  had 
terribly  damaged  the  pretensions  of  their  church. 

"Milton  arrived  in  Paris  April  or  May,  1638.  He 
received  civilities  from  the  English  ambassador,  Lord 
Scudamore,  who  at  his  request  gave  him  an  introduction 
to  Grotius.  Grotius,  says  Phillips,  "  took  Milton's  visit 
kindly,  and  gave  him  entertainment  suitable  to  his  worth, 
and  the  high  commendations  he  had  heard  of  him."  We 
have  no  other  record  of  his  stay  of  mai^  days  in  Paris, 
though  A.  Wood  supposes  that  "  the  manners  and  graces 
of  that  place  were  not  agreeable  to  his  mind."  It  was 
August  before  he  reached  Florence,  by  way  of  Nice  and 
Genoa,  and  in  Florence  he  spent  the  two  months  which 
Ave   now   consider  the  most  impossible  there,  the  months 


hi.]  JOUENEY  TO  ITALY.  35 

of  August  and  September.  Nor  did  he  find,  as  he  would 
find  now,  the  city  deserted  by  the  natives.  "We  hear 
nothing  of  Milton's  impressions  of  the  place,  but  of  the 
men  whom  he  met  there  he  retained  always  a  lively 
and  affectionate  remembrance.  The  learned  and  polite 
Florentines  had  not  fled  to  the  hills  from  the  stifling  heat 
and  blinding  glare  of  the  Lung'  Arno,  but  seem  to  have 
carried  on  their  literary  meetings  in  defiance  of  climate. 
This  was  the  age  of  academies — an  institution,  Milton 
says,  "  of  most  praiseworthy  effect,  both  for  the  cultivation 
of  polite  letters  and  the  keeping  up  of  friendships." 
Florence  had  five  or  six  such  societies,  the  Florentine,  the 
Delia  Crusca,  the  Svogliati,  the  Apotisti,  &c.  It  is  easy, 
and  usual  in  our  day,  to  speak  contemptuously  of  the 
literary  tone  of  these  academies,  fostering,  as  they  did, 
an  amiable  and  garrulous  intercourse  of  reciprocal  compli- 
ment, and  to  contrast  them  unfavourably  with  our 
societies  for  severe  research.  They  were  at  least  evidence 
of  culture,  and  served  to  keep  alive  the  traditions  of  the 
more  masculine  Medicean  age.  And  that  the  members 
of  these  associations  were  not  unaware  of  their  own  degene- 
racy and  of  its  cause,  we  learn  from  Milton  himself.  For 
as  soon  as  they  found  that  they  were  safe  with  the  young 
Briton,  they  disclosed  their  own  bitter  hatred  of  the 
church's  yoke  which  they  had  to  bear.  "I  have  sate 
among  their  learned  men,"  Milton  wrote  in  1644,  "and 
been  counted  happy  to  be  born  in  such  a  place  of  philo- 
sophic freedom  as  they  supposed  England  was,  while 
themselves  did  nothing  but  bemoan  the  servile  condition 
into  which  learning  amongst  them  was  brought,  that  this 
was  it  which  had  dampt  the  glory  of  Italian  wits 
that  nothing  had  been  written  there  now  these  many 
years  but   flattery  and  fustian."     Milton  was  introduced 

d  2 


80  FIEST  PERIOD.    1608—1639.  [OHAr. 

at  the  meetings  of  their  academies;  his  presence  is  re- 
corded on  two  occasions,  of  -which  the  latest  is  the  lGth 
September  at  the  Svogliati.  He  paid  his  scot  by  reciting 
from  memory  some  of  his  youthful  Latin  verses,  hexa- 
meters, "molto  erudite,"  says  the  minute-book  of  the 
sitting,  and  others,  which  "  I  shifted,  in  the  scarcity  of 
books  and  conveniences,  to  patch  up."  He  obtained  much 
credit  by  these  exercises,  which,  indeed,  deserved  it  by 
comparison.  He  ventured  upon  the  perilous  experiment 
of  offering  some  compositions  in  Italian,  which  the  fas- 
tidious Tuscan  ear  at  least  professed  to  include  in  those 
"  encomiums  which  the  Italian  is  not  forward  to  bestoAV 
on  men  of  this  side  the  Alps." 

The  author  of  Lycidas  cannot  but  have  been  quite 
aware  of  the  small  poetical  merit  of  such  an  ode  as  that 
which  was  addressed  to  him  by  Francini.  In  this  ode 
Milton  is  the  swan  of  Thames — "  Thames,  which,  owing 
to  thee,  rivals  Boeotian  Permessus  ;"  and  so  forth.  But 
there  is  a  genuine  feeling,  an  ungrudging  warmth  of 
sympathetic  recognition  underlying  the  trite  and  tumid 
panegyric.  And  Milton  may  have  yielded  to  the  not 
unnatural  impulse  of  showing  his  countrymen,  that  though 
not  a  prophet  in  boorish  and  fanatical  England,  he  had 
found  recognition  in  the  home  of  letters  and  arts.  Upon 
us  is  forced,  by  this  their  different  reception  of  Milton, 
the  contrast  between  the  two  countries,  Italy  and  England, 
in  the  middle  of  the  seventeenth  century.  The  rude 
north,  whose  civilisation  was  all  to  come,  concentrating  all 
its  intelligence  in  a  violent  effort  to  work  off  the  eccle- 
siastical poison  from  its  system,  is  brought  into  sharp  con- 
trast with  the  sweet  south,  whose  civilisation  is  behind  it, 
and  whose  intellect,  after  a  severe  struggle,  has  succumbed 
to  the  material  force  and  organisation  of  the  church. 


in.]  JOURNEY  TO  ITALY.  37 

As  soon  as  the  season  allowed  of  it,  Milton  set  forward 
to  Rome,  taking  what  was  then  the  usual  way  by  Siena. 
At  Borne  he  spent  two  months,  occupying  himself  partly 
with  seeing  the  antiquities,  and  partly  with  cultivating 
the  acquaintance  of  natives,  and  some  of  the  many 
foreigners  resident  in  the  eternal  city.  But  though  ho 
received  much  civility,  we  do  not  find  that  he  met  with 
the  peculiar  sympathy  which  endeared  to  him  his  Tuscan 
friends.  His  chief  ally  was  the  German,  Lucas  Holstenius, 
a  native  of  Hamhurg,  who  had  ahjured  Protestantism  to 
"become  librarian  of  the  Vatican.  Holstenius  had  resided 
three  years  in  Oxford,  and  considered  himself  bound  to 
repay  to  the  English  scholar  some  of  the  attentions  he 
had  received  himself.  Through  Holstenius  Milton  was 
presented  to  the  nephew,  Francesco  Barberini,  who  was 
just  then  everything  in  Borne.  It  was  at  a  concert  at  the 
Barberini  palace  that  Milton  heard  Leonora  Baroni  sing. 
His  three  Latin  epigrams  addressed  to  this  lady,  the  first 
singer  of  Italy,  or  of  the  world  at  that  time,  testify  to  the 
enthusiasm  she  excited  in  the  musical  soul  of  Milton. 

Nor  are  these  three  epigrams  the  only  homage  which 
Milton  paid  to  Italian  beauty.  The  susceptible  poet,  who  in 
the  suidess  north  would  fain  have  "sported  with  the  tangles 
of  Neaera's  hair,"  could  not  behold  Neaera  herself  and  the 
flashing  splendour  of  her  eye,  unmoved.  Milton  proclaims 
(Defensio  Secunda)  that  in  all  his  foreign  tour  he  had 
lived  clear  from  all  that  is  disgraceful.  But  the  pudicity 
of  his  behaviour  and  language  covers  a  soul  tremulous 
with  emotion,  whose  passion  was  intensified  by  the  disci- 
pline of  a  chaste  intention.  Five  Italian  pieces  among 
his  poems  are  to  the  address  of  another  lady,  whoso 
"majestic  movements  and  love- darting  dark  brow  "had 
subdued  him.     The  charm  lay  in  the  novelty  of  this  style 


38  FIRST  PERIOD.     160S— 1G39.  [chap. 

of  beauty  to  one  who  came  from  the  land  of  the  "  vermeil- 
tinctur'd  cheek  "  (Comus)  and  the  "golden  nets  of  hair" 
(EL  i.  60).  No  clue  has  been  discovered  to  the  name 
of  this  divinity,  or  to  the  occasion  on  which  Milton  saw 
her. 

Of  Milton's  impression  of  Kome  there  is  no  record. 
There  are  no  traces  of  special  observation  in  his  poetry. 
The  description  of  the  city  in  Paradise  Regained  (iv.  32) 
has  nothing  characteristic,  and  could  have  been  written 
by  one  who  had  never  seen  it,  and  by  many  as  well  as 
by  Milton.  We  get  one  glimpse  of  him  by  aid  of  the 
register  of  the  English  College,  as  dining  there  at  a 
"  sumptuous  entertainment "  on  30th  October,  when  he 
met  Nicholas  Carey,  brother  of  Lord  Falkland.  In  spite 
of  Sir  Henry  Wotton's  caution,  his  resoluteness,  as  A. 
Wood  calls  it,  in  his  religion,  besides  making  the  English 
Jesuits  indignant,  caused  others,  not  Jesuits,  to  withhold 
civilities.  Milton  only  tells  us  himself  that  the  anti- 
quities detained  him  in  Kome  about  two  months. 

At  the  end  of  November  he  went  on  to  Naples.  On  the 
road  he  fell  in  with  an  Eremite  friar,  who  gave  him  an 
introduction  to  the  one  man  in  Naples  whom  it  was  im- 
portant he  should  know,  Giovanni  Battista  Manso, 
Marquis  of  Villa.  The  marquis,  now  seventy- eight,  had 
been  for  two  generations  the  Maecenas  of  letters  in 
Southern  Italy.  He  had  sheltered  Tasso  in  the  former 
generation,  and  Marini  in  the  latter.  It  was  the  singular 
privilege  of  his  old  age  that  ho  should  now  entertain  a 
third  poet,  greater  than  either.  In  spite  of  his  years,  he 
was  able  to  act  as  cicerone  to  the  young  Englishman  over 
the  scenes  which  he  himself,  in  his  Life  of  Tasso,  has 
described  with  the  enthusiasm  of  a  poet.  But  even  the 
high-souled  Manso  quailed  before  the  terrors  of  the  In- 


in.]  JOURNEY  TO  ITALY.  39 

quisition,  and  apologised  to  Milton  for  not  having  shown 
him  greater  attention,  because  he  would  not  be  more 
circumspect  in  the  matter  of  religion.  Milton's  Italian 
journey  brings  out  the  two  conflicting  strains  of  feeling 
which  were  uttered  together  in  Lycidas,  the  poet's  im- 
pressibility by  nature,  the  freeman's  indignation  at  clerical 
domination. 

The  time  was  now  at  hand  when  the  latter  passion,  the 
noble  rage  of  freedom,  was  to  suppress  the  more  delicate 
flower  of  jDoetic  imagination.  Milton's  original  scheme 
had  included  Sicily  and  Greece.  The  serious  aspect  of 
affairs  at  home  compelled  him  to  renounce  his  project. 
"  I  considered  it  dishonourable  to  be  enjoying  myself  at 
my  ease  in  foreign  lands,  while  my  countrymen  were 
striking  a  blow  for  freedom."  He  retraced  his  steps 
leisurely  enough,  however,  making  a  halt  of  two  months 
in  Rome,  and  again  one  of  two  months  in  Florence. 
We  find  him  mentioned  in  the  minutes  of  the  academy 
of  the  Svogliati  as  having  been  present  at  three  of 
their  weekly  meetings,  on  the  17th,  24th,  and  31st 
March.  But  the  most  noteworthy  incident  of  his  second 
Florentine  residence  is  his  interview  with  Galileo.  He 
had  been  unable  to  see  the  veteran  martyr  of  science  on 
his  first  visit.  For  though  Galileo  was  at  that  time 
living  within  the  walls,  he  was  kept  a  close  prisoner 
by  the  Inquisition,  and  not  allowed  either  to  set  foot 
outside  his  own  door,  or  to  receive  visits  from  non- 
Catholics.  In  the  spring  of  1639,  however,  he  was 
allowed  to  go  back  to  his  villa  at  Gioiello,  near  Arcetri, 
and  Milton  obtained  admission  to  him,  old,  frail,  and 
blind,  but  in  full  possession  of  his  mental  faculty.  There 
is  observable  in  Milton,  as  Mr.  Masson  suggests,  a  pro- 
phetic fascination  of  the  fancy  on  the  subject  of  blind- 


40  FIRST  PERIOD.     1608—1639.  [chap. 

ness.  And  the  deep  impression  left  by  this  sight  of  "  the 
Tuscan  artist "  is  evidenced  by  the  feeling  with  which 
Galileo's  name  and  achievement  are  imbedded  in  Paradise 
Lost. 

From  Florence,  Milton  crossed  the  Apennines  by  Bo- 
logna and  Ferrara  to  Venice.  From  this  port  he  shipped 
for  England  the  books  he  had  collected  during  his  tour, 
books  curious  and  rare  as  they  seemed  to  Phillips,  and 
among  them  a  chest  or  two  of  choice  music  books. 
The  month  of  April  was  spent  at  Venice,  and  bidding 
farewell  to  the  beloved  land  he  would  never  visit  again, 
Milton  passed  the  Alps  to  Geneva. 

No  Englishman's  foreign  pilgrimage  was  complete  with- 
out touching  at  this  marvellous  capital  of  the  reformed 
faith,  which  with  almost  no  resources  had  successfully 
braved  the  whole  might  of  the  Catholic  reaction.  The 
only  record  of  Milton's  stay  at  Geneva  is  the  album  of 
a  Neapolitan  refugee,  to  which  Milton  contributed  his 
autograph,  under  date  10th  June,  1G39,  with  the  follow- 
ing quotation  : — 

If  virtuo  feeble  were, 

Ileaven  itself  would  stoop  to  her. 

(From  Comits). 
Coolum  uon  animum  inuto,  dum  trans  mare  curro. 

(From  Horace.) 

But  it  is  probable  that  he  was  a  guest  in  the  house  of 
one  of  the  leading  pastors,  Giovanni  Diodati,  whose 
nephew  Charles,  a  physician  commencing  practice  in 
London,  was  Milton's  bosom  friend.  Hero  Milton  first 
heard  of  the  death,  in  the  previous  August,  of  that  friend. 
It  was  a  heavy  blow  to  him,  for  one  of  the  chief  plea- 
sures of  being  at  home  again  woidd  have  been  to  pour 


II.]  JOURNEY  TO  ITALY.  41 

into  a  sympathetic  Italian  ear  the  story  of  his  adventures. 
The  sadness  of  the  homeward  journey  from  Geneva  is 
recorded  for  us  in  the  Epitapliium  Damonis.  This 
piece  is  an  elegy  to  the  memory  of  Charles  Diodati.  It 
unfortunately  differs  from  the  elegy  on  King  in  heing 
written  in  Latin,  and  is  thus  inaccessihle  to  uneducated 
readers.  As  to  such  readers  the  topic  of  Milton's  Latin 
poetry  is  necessarily  an  ungrateful  subject,  I  will  dismiss 
it  here  with  one  remark.  Milton's  Latin  verses  are  dis- 
tinguished from  most  Neodatin  verse  by  heing  a  vehicle 
of  real  emotion.  His  technical  skill  is  said  to  have  been 
surpassed  by  others ;  but  that  in  which  he  stands  alone 
is,  that  in  these  exercises  of  imitative  art  he  is  able  to 
remain  himself,  and  to  give  utterance  to  genuine  passion. 
Artificial  Arcadianism  is  as  much  the  frame-work  of  the 
elegy  on  Diodati  as  it  is  of  Lycidas.  "We  have  Daphnis 
and  Lion,  Tityrus  and  Amyntas  for  characters,  Sicilian 
valleys  for  scenery,  while  Pan,  Pales,  and  the  Fauns 
represent  the  supernatural.  The  shepherds  defend  their 
flocks  from  wolves  and  lions.  But  this  factitious  buco- 
licism  is  pervaded  by  a  pathos,  which,  like  volcanic  heat, 
has  fused  into  a  new  compound  the  dilapidated  debris 
of  the  Theocritean  world.  And  in  the  Latin  elegy  there 
is  more  tenderness  than  in  the  English.  Charles  Diodati 
was  much  nearer  to  Milton  than  had  been  Edward  King. 
The  sorrow  in  Lycidas  is  not  so  much  personal  as  it  is 
the  regret  of  the  society  of  Christ's.  King  had  only  been 
known  to  Milton  as  one  of  the  students  of  the  same 
college ;  Diodati  was  the  associate  of  his  choice  in  riper 
manhood. 

The  Epitapliium  Damonis  is  further  memorable  as 
Milton's  last  attempt  in  serious  Latin  verse.  He  dis- 
covered in  this  experiment  that  Latin  was  not  an  adequate 


42  FIRST  PERIOD.     1608-1G39.  [ch.  nr. 

vehicle  of  the  feeling  lie  desired  to  give  vent  to.  In  the 
concluding  lines  he  takes  a  formal  farewell  of  the  Latian 
muse,  and  announces  his  purpose  of  adopting  henceforth 
the  "  harsh  and  grating  Brittonic  idiom "  (Brittonicum 
etridens). 


SECOND   PERIOD.     1640—1660. 
CHAPTER  IV. 

EDUCATIONAL    THEORY — TEACHING. 

Milton  was  back  in  England  in  August,  1639.  He  had 
been  absent  a  year  and  three  months,  during  which  space 
of  time  the  aspect  of  public  affairs,  which  had  been  per- 
plexed and  gloomy  when  he  left,  had  been  growing  still 
more  ominous  of  a  coming  storm.  The  issues  of  the  con- 
troversy were  so  pervasive,  that  it  was  almost  impossible 
for  any  educated  man  who  understood  them  not  to  range 
himself  on  a  side.  Yet  Milton,  though  he  had  broken  off 
his  projected  tour  in  consequence,  did  not  rush  into  the 
fray  on  his  return.  He  resumed  his  retired  and  studious 
life,  "  with  no  small  delight,  cheerfully  leaving,"  as  he 
says,  "  the  event  of  public  affairs  first  to  God,  and  then  to 
those  to  whom  the  people  had  committed  that  task." 

He  did  not  return  to  Horton,  but  took  lodgings  in 
London,  in  the  house  of  Russel  a  tailor,  in  St.  Bride's 
churchyard,  at  the  city  end  of  Pleet-street,  on  the  site  of 
what  is  now  Earringdon-street.  There  is  no  attempt  on 
the  part  of  Milton  to  take  up  a  profession,  not  even  for  the 
sake  of  appearances.  The  elder  Milton  was  content  to 
provide  the  son,  of  whom  he  was  proud,  with  the  means 
of  prosecuting  his  eccentric  scheme  of  life,  to  continue, 


ii  SECOXD  PERIOD.     16 10— 1660.  [chap. 

namely,  lo  prepare  himself  for  some  great  work,  nature 
unknown. 

For  a  young  man  of  simple  habits  and  studious  life  a 
little  suffices.  The  chief  want  is  books,  and  of  these,  for 
Milton's  style  of  reading,  select  rather  than  copious,  a 
large  collection  is  superfluous.  There  were  in  1640  no 
public  libraries  in  London,  and  a  scholar  had  to  find  his 
own  store  of  books  or  to  borrow  from  his  friends.  Milton 
never  can  have  possessed  a  large  library.  At  Horton  he 
may  have  used  Kederminster's  bequest  to  Langley  Church. 
Still,  with  his  Italian  acquisitions,  added  to  the  books  that 
he  already  possessed,  he  soon  found  a  lodging  too  narrow 
for  his  accommodation,  and  removed  to  a  house  of  his 
own,  "  a  pretty  garden-house,  in  Aldersgate,  at  the  end  of 
an  entry."  Aldersgate  was  outside  the  city  walls,  on  the 
verge  of  the  open  country  of  Islington,  and  was  a  genteel 
though  not  a  fashionable  quarter.  There  were  few  streets 
in  London,  says  Phillips,  more  free  from  noise. 

He  had  taken  in  hand  the  education  of  his  two 
nephews,  John  and  Edward  Phillips,  sons  of  his  only 
sister  Anne.  Anne  was  a  few  years  older  than  her  bro- 
ther John.  Her  first  husband,  Edward  Phillips,  had  died 
in  1631,  and  the  widow  had  given  her  two  sons  a  step- 
father in  one  Thomas  Agar,  who  was  in  the  Clerk  of  the 
Crown's  office.  Milton,  on  settling  in  London  in  1639, 
had  at  once  taken  his  younger  nephew  John  to  livo  with 
him.  When,  in  1610,  he  removed  to  Aldersgate,  the 
elder,  Edward,  also  came  under  his  roof. 

If  it  was  affection  for  his  sister  which  first  moved 
Milton  to  undertake  the  tuition  of  her  sons,  he  soon  deve- 
loped a  taste  for  the  occupation.  In  16-13  he  began  to 
receive  into  his  house  other  pupils,  but  only,  says 
Phillips  (who  is  solicitous  that  his  uncle  should  not  be 


iv.]  EDUCATIONAL  THEORY.  45 

thought  to  have  kept  a  school),  "  the  sons  of  some  gentle- 
men that  were  his  intimate  friends."  He  threw  into  his 
lessons  the  same  energy  which  he  carried  into  everything 
else.  In  his  eagerness  to  find  a  place  for  everything  that 
could  be  learnt,  there  could  have  been  few  hours  in  the 
day  which  were  not  invaded  by  teaching.  He  had  ex- 
changed the  contemplative  leisure  of  Horton  for  a  busy 
life,  in  which  no  hour  but  had  its  calls.  Even  on  Sundays 
there  were  lessons  in  the  Greek  Testament  and  dictations 
of  a  system  of  Divinity  in  Latin.  His  pamphlets  of  this 
period  betray,  in  their  want  of  measure  and  equilibrium, 
even  in  their  heated  style  and  passion-flushed  language, 
the  life  at  high  pressure  which  their  author  was  leading. 

We  have  no  account  of  Milton's  method  of  teaching 
from  any  competent  pupil.  Edward  Phillips  was  an 
amiable  and  upright  man,  who  earned  his  living  respec- 
tably by  tuition  and  the  compilation  of  books.  He  held 
his  uncle's  memory  in  great  veneration.  But  when  he 
comes  to  describe  the  education  he  received  at  his  uncle's 
hands,  the  only  characteristic  on  which  he  dwells  is  that  of 
quantity.  Phillips's  account  is,  however,  supplemented 
for  us  by  Milton's  written  theory.  His  Tractate  of  Edu- 
cation to  Master  Samuel  Hartlib  is  probably  known  even 
to  those  who  have  never  looked  at  anything  else  of  Milton's 
in  prose. 

Of  all  the  practical  arts,  that  of  education  seems  the 
most  cumbrous  in  its  method,  and  to  be  productive  of  the 
smallest  results  with  the  most  lavish  expenditure  of 
means.  Hence  the  subject  of  education  is  one  which  is 
always  luring  on  the  innovator  and  the  theorist.  Every 
one,  as  he  grows  up,  becomes  aware  of  time  lost,  and  effort 
misapplied,  in  his  own  case.  It  is  not  unnatural  to  desire 
to  save  our  children  from  a  like  waste  of  power.     And  in  a 


40  SECOND  PERIOD.     1610—1660.  [ciur. 

time  such  as  was  that  of  Milton's  youth,  when  all  tra- 
ditions were  being  questioned,  and  all  institutions  were  to 
be  remodelled,  it  was  certain  that  the  school  would  be 
among  the  earliest  objects  to  attract  an  experimental 
reformer.  Among  the  advanced  minds  of  the  time  there 
had  grown  up  a  deep  dissatisfaction  with  the  received 
methods  of  our  schools,  and  more  especially  of  our 
universities.  The  great  instaurator  of  all  knowledge, 
Bacon,  in  preaching  the  necessity  of  altering  the  whole 
method  of  knowing,  included  as  matter  of  course  the 
method  of  teaching  to  know. 

The  man  who  carried  over  the  Baconian  aspiration  into 
education  was  Comenius  (d.  1670).  A  projector  and  en- 
thusiast, Comenius  desired,  like  Bacon,  an  entirely  new 
intellectual  era.  With  Bacon's  intellectual  ambition,  but 
without  Bacon's  capacity,  Comenius  proposed  to  revo- 
lutionise all  knowledge,  and  to  make  complete  wisdom 
accessible  to  all,  in  a  brief  space  of  time,  and  with  a 
minimum  of  labour.  Language  only  as  an  instrument, 
not  as  an  end  in  itself ;  many  living  languages,  instead  of 
the  one  dead  language  of  the  old  school ;  a  knowledge  of 
things,  instead  of  words ;  the  free  use  of  our  eyes  and  ears 
upon  the  nature  that  surrounds  us  ;  intelligent  appre- 
hension, instead  of  loading  the  memory — all  these  doc- 
trines, afterwards  inherited  by  the  party  of  rational 
reform,  were  first  promulgated  in  Europe  by  the  numerous 
pamphlets— some  ninety  have  been  reckoned  up — of  this 
Teuto-Slav,  Comenius. 

Comenius  had  as  the  champion  of  his  views  in  England 
.Samuel  Ilartlib,  a  Dantziger  by  origin,  settled  in  London 
since  1G28.  Ilartlib  had  even  less  of  real  science  than 
Comenius,  but  he  was  equally  possessed  by  the  Baconian 
ideal   of  a  new  heaven   and  a  new  earth  of  knowledge. 


iv.]  EDUCATIONAL  THEORY.  47 

.Not  himself  a  discoverer  in  any  branch,  lie  was  unceasingly 
occupied  in  communicating  the  discoveries  and  inventions 
of  others.  He  had  an  ear  for  every  novelty  of  whatever 
kind,  interesting  himself  in  social,  religious,  philanthropic 
schemes,  as  well  as  in  experiments  in  the  arts.  A  sanguine 
universality  of  benevolence  pervaded  that  generation  of 
ardent  souls,  akin  only  in  their  common  anticipation  of  an 
unknown  Utopia.  A  secret  was  within  the  reach  of 
human  ingenuity  which  would  make  all  mankind  happy. 
But  there  were  two  directions  more  especially  in  which 
Hartlib's  zeal  without  knowledge  abounded.  These  were 
a  grand  scheme  for  the  union  of  Protestant  Christendom, 
and  his  propagand  of  Comenius's  school-reform. 

For  the  first  of  these  projects  it  was  not  likely  that 
Hartlib  would  gain  a  proselyte  in  Milton,  who  had  at 
one-and-twenty  judged  Anglican  orders  a  servitude,  and 
was  already  chafing  against  the  restraints  of  Presbytery. 
But  on  his  other  hobby,  that  of  school-reform,  Milton  was 
not  only  sympathetic,  but  when  Hartlib  came  to  talk 
with  him,  he  found  that  most  or  all  of  Comenius's  ideas 
had  already  independently  presented  themselves  to  the 
reflection  or  experience  of  the  Englishman.  At  Hartlib's 
request  Milton  consented  to  put  down  his  thoughts  on 
paper,  and  even  to  print  them  in  a  quarto  pamphlet  of 
eight  pages,  entitled,  Of  Education:  to  Master  Samuel 
Hartlib. 

This  tract,  often  reproduced  and  regarded,  along  with 
one  of  Locke's,  as  a  substantial  contribution  to  the  sub- 
ject, must  often  have  grievously  disappointed  those  who 
have  eagerly  consulted  it  for  practical  hints  or  guidance  of 
any  kind.  Its  interest  is  wholly  biographical.  It  cannot 
be  regarded  as  a  valuable  contribution  to  educational 
theory,  but  it  is  strongly  marked  with  the  Miltonic  indi- 


43  SECOND  PEEIOD.    1640-1660.  [ciiap. 

viduality.  We  find  in  it  the  same  lofty  conception  of  the 
aim  "which  Milton  carried  into  everything  he  attempted  ; 
the  same  disdain  of  the  "beaten  routine,  and  proud  reliance 
upon  his  own  resources.  He  had  given  vent  elsewhere  to 
his  discontent  with  the  system  of  Camhridge,  "  which,  as 
in  the  time  of  her  better  health,  and  mine  own  younger 
judgment,  I  never  greatly  admired,  so  now  (1G42)  much 
less."  In  the  letter  to  Hartlib  he  denounces  with  equal 
fierceness  the  schools  and  "  the  many  mistakes  which  have 
made  learning  generally  so  unpleasing  and  so  unsuc- 
cessful." The  alumni  of  the  universities  carry  away  with 
them  a  hatred  and  contempt  for  learning,  and  sink  into 
"ignorantly  zealous"  clergymen,  or  mercenary  lawyers, 
while  the  men  of  fortune  betake  themselves  to  feasts 
and  jollity.  These  last,  Milton  thinks,  are  the  best  of 
the  three  classes. 

All  these  moral  shipwrecks  are  the  consequence, 
according  to  Milton,  of  bad  education.  It  is  in  our 
power  to  avert  them  by  a  reform  of  schools.  But  the 
measures  of  reform,  when  produced,  are  ludicrously  incom- 
mensurable with  the  evils  to  be  remedied.  I  do  not 
trouble  the  reader  with  the  proposals  ;  they  are  a  form  of 
the  well-known  mistake  of  regarding  education  as  merely 
the  communication  of  useful  knowledge.  The  doctrine  as 
propounded  in  the  Tractate  is  complicated  by  the  further 
difficulty,  that  the  knowledge  is  to  be  gathered  out  of 
Greek  and  Latin  books.  This  doctrine  is  advocated  by 
Milton  with  the  ardour  of  his  own  lofty  enthusiasm.  In 
virtue  of  the  grandeur  of  zeal  which  inspires  them,  these 
pages,  which  are  in  substance  nothing  more  than  the  now 
familiar  omniscient  examiner's  programme,  retain  a  place 
as  one  of  our  classics.  The  fine  definition  of  education 
here  given  has   never  been    improved  upon :  "  I  call  a 


iv.]  EDUCATIONAL  THEOEY.  49 

complete  and  generous  education  that  which  fits  a  man 
to  perform  justly,  skilfully,  and  magnanimously,  all  the 
offices,  hoth  private  and  public,  of  peace  and  war."  This 
is  the  true  Milton.  When  he  offers,  in  another  page,  as 
an  equivalent  definition  of  the  true  end  of  learning,  "  to 
repair  the  ruin  of  our  first  parents  by  regaining  to  know 
God  aright,"  we  have  the  theological  Milton,  and  what 
he  took  on  from  the  current  language  of  his  age. 

Milton  saw  strongly,  as  many  have  done  before  and 
since,  one  weak  point  in  the  practice  of  schools,  namely, 
the  small  result  of  much  time.  He  fell  into  the  natural 
error  of  the  inexperienced  teacher,  that  of  supposing  that 
the  remedy  was  the  ingestion  of  much  and  diversified 
intelligible  matter.  It  requires  much  observation  of 
young  minds  to  discover  that  the  rapid  inculcation  of 
unassimilated  information  stupefies  the  faculties  instead  of 
training  them.  Is  it  fanciful  to  think  that  in  Edward 
Phillips,  who  was  always  employing  his  superficial  pen 
upon  topics  with  which  he  snatched  a  fugitive  acquain- 
tance, we  have  a  concrete  example  of  the  natural  result 
of  the  Mdtonic  system  of  instruction  1 


E 


CHAPTEE   V. 

MARRIAGE,    AND    PAMPHLETS    ON    DIVORCE. 

We  have  seen  that  Milton  turned  back  from  his  unaccom- 
plished tour  because  he  "  deemed  it  disgraceful  to  be 
idling  away  his  time  abroad  for  his  own  gratification, 
while  his  countrymen  were  contending  for  their  liberty." 
From  these  words  biographers  have  inferred  that  he 
hurried  home  with  the  view  of  taking  service  in  the  Par- 
liamentarian army.  This  interpretation  of  his  words 
seems  to  receive  confirmation  from  what  Phillips  thinks 
he  had  heard, — "  I  am  much  mistaken  if  there  were  not 
about  this  time  a  design  in  agitation  of  making  him 
Adjutant-General  in  Sir  William  Waller's  army." 
Phillips  very  likely  thought  that  a  recruit  could  enlist  as 
an  Adjutant-General,  but  it  does  not  appear  from  Milton's 
own  words  that  he  himself  ever  contemplated  service  in 
the  field.  The  words  "  contending  for  liberty  "  (de  liber- 
tate  dimicarent)  could  not,  as  said  of  the  winter  1G38-39, 
mean  anything  more  than  the  strife  of  party.  And  when 
war  did  break  out,  it  must  have  been  obvious  to  Milton 
that  he  could  serve  the  cause  better  as  a  scholar  than  as  a 
soldier. 

That  he  never  took  service  in  the  army  is  certain.     If 


ch.  v.]  MARRIAGE.  51 

there  was  a  time  when  he  should  have  heen  found  in  the 
ranks,  it  was  on  the  12th  November,  1642,  when  every 
able-bodied  citizen  turned  out  to  oppose  the  march  of  the 
king,  who  had  advanced  to  Brentford.  But  we  have  the 
evidence  of  the  sonnet — 

Captain,  or  Colonel,  or  Knight  in  arms, 

that  Milton,  on  this  occasion,  stayed  at  home.  He  had, 
as  he  announced  in  February,  1642,  "taken  labour  and 
intent  study  "  to  be  his  portion  in  this  life.  He  did  not 
contemplate  enlisting  his  pen  in  the  service  of  the  Par- 
liament, but  the  exaltation  of  his  country's  glory  by  the 
composition  of  some  monument  of  the  English  language, 
as  Dante  or  Tasso  had  done  for  Italian.  But  a  project 
ambitious  as  this  lay  too  far  off  to  be  put  in  execution  as 
soon  as.  thought  of.  The  ultimate  purpose  had  to  give 
place  to  the  immediate.  One  of  these  interludes,  orkrinatiny 
in  Milton's  personal  relations,  was  his  series  of  tracts  on 
divorce. 

In  the  early  part  of  the  summer  of  1643,  Milton  took 
a  sudden  journey  into  the  country,  "  nobody  about  him 
certainly  knowing  the  reason,  or  that  it  was  any  more 
than  a  journey  of  recreation."  He  was  absent  about  a 
month,  and  when  he  returned  he  brought  back  a  wife 
with  him.  Nor  was  the  bride  alone.  She  was  attended 
"  by  some  few  of  her  nearest  relations,"  and  there  was 
feasting  and  celebration  of  the  nuptials,  in  the  house  in 
Aldersgate-street. 

The  bride's  name  was  Mary,  eldest  daughter  of  Richard 
Powell,  Esq.,  of  Forest  Hill,  J.P.  for  the  county  of  Oxford. 
Forest  Hill  is  a  village  and  parish  about  five  miles  from 
Oxford  on  the  Thame  road,  where  Mr.  Powell  had  a  houso 

e  2 


52  SECOND  PERIOD.     1610—1660.  [chap. 

and  a  small  estate  of  some  3007.  a  year,  value  of  that  day. 
Forest  Hill  was  within  the  ancient  royal  forest  of  Shot- 
over,  of .  which  Mr.  Powell  was  lessee.  The  reader  will 
remember  that  the  poet's  father  was  horn  at  Stanton  St. 
John,  the  adjoining  parish  to  Fewest  Hill,  and  that  Eichard 
Milton,  the  grandfather,  had  been  under-ranger  of  the 
royal  forest.  There  had  been  many  transactions  between 
the  Milton  and  the  Powell  families  as  far  back  as  1627. 
In  paying  a  visit  to  that  neighbourhood,  Milton  was  both 
returning  to  the  district  which  had  been  the  home  of  all 
the  Miltons,  and  renewing  an  old  acquaintance  with  the 
Powell  family.  Mr.  Powell,  though  in  receipt  of  a  fair 
income  for  a  country  gentleman — 3001.  a  year  of  that  day 
may  be  roughly  valued  at  1000Z.  of  our  day — and  his  wife 
had  brought  him  30007.,  could  not  live  within  his  means. 
His  children  were  numerous,  and,  belonging  as  he  did  to 
the  cavalier  party,  his  house  was  conducted  with  the 
careless  hospitality  of  a  royalist  gentleman.  Twenty  years 
before  ho  had  begun  borrowing,  and  among  other  persons 
had  had  recourse  to  the  prosperous  and  saving  scrivener  of 
Bread-street.  He  was  already  mortgaged  to  the  Miltons, 
father  and  sons,  more  deeply  than  his  estate  had  any 
prospect  of  paying,  which  was  perhaps  the  reason  why  he 
found  no  difficulty  in  promising  a  portion  of  1000/.  with 
his  daughter.  Milton,  with  a  poet's  want  of  caution,  or 
indifference  to  money,  and  with  a  lofty  masculine  dis- 
regard of  the  temper  and  character  of  the  girl  he  asked 
to  share  his  life,  came  home  with  his  bride  in  triumph, 
and  held  feasting  in  celebration  of  his  hasty  and  ill  con- 
sidered choice.  It  was  a  beginning  of  sorrows  to  him. 
Hitherto,  up  to  his  thirty-fifth,  year,  independent  master 
of  leisure  and  the  delights  of  literature,  his  years  had 
passed   without  a  check  or  a  shadow.     From  this  day 


v.]  MARRIAGE.  53 

forward  domestic  misery,  the  importunities  of  business, 
the  clamour  of  controversy,  crowned  by  the  crushing 
calamity  of  blindness,  were  to  be  his  portion  for  more  than 
thirty  years.  Singular  among  poets  in  the  serene  fortune 
of  the  first  half  of  life,  in  the  second  half  his  piteous  fate 
was  to  rank  in  wretchedness  with  that  of  his  masters, 
Dante  or  Tasso. 

The  biographer,  acquainted  with  the  event,  has  no 
difficulty  in  predicting  it,  and  in  saying  at  this  point  in 
his  story,  that  Milton  might  have  known  better  than, 
with  his  puritanical  connections,  to  have  taken  to  wife  a 
daughter  of  a  cavalier  house,  to  have  brought  her  from  a 
roystering  home,  frequented  by  the  dissolute  officers  of 
the  Oxford  garrison,  to  the  spare  diet  and  philosophical 
retirement  of  a  recluse  student,  and  to  have  looked  for 
sympathy  and  response  for  his  speculations  from  an  un- 
educated and  frivolous  girl.  Love  has  blinded,  and  will 
continue  to  blind,  the  wisest  men  to  calculations  as  easy 
and  as  certain  as  these.  And  Milton,  in  whose  soul 
Puritan  austerity  was  as  yet  only  contending  with  the 
more  genial  currents  of  humanity,  had  a  far  greater  than 
average  susceptibility  to  the  charm  of  woman.  Even 
at  the  later  date  of  Paradise  Lost,  voluptuous  thoughts, 
as  Mr.  Hallam  has  observed,  are  not  uncongenial  to  him. 
And  at  an  earlier  age  his  poems,  candidly  pure  from 
the  lascivious  inuendoes  of  his  contemporaries,  have  pre- 
served the  record  of  the  rapid  impression  of  the  momen- 
tary passage  of  beauty  upon  his  susceptible  mind.  Once, 
at  twenty,  he  was  set  all  on  flame  by  the  casual  meeting, 
in  one  of  his  walks  in  the  suburbs  of  London,  with  a 
damsel  whom  he  never  saw  again.  Again,  sonnets  in. 
to  v.  tell  how  he  fell  before  the  new  type  of  foreign 
beauty  which  crossed  his  path  at  Bologna.     A  similar 


54  SECOND  PERIOD.     1610— 16G0.  [chap. 

surprise  of  his  fancy  at  the  expense  of  his  judgment  seems 
to  have  happened  on  the  present  occasion  of  his  visit  to 
Shotover.  There  is  no  evidence  that  Mary  Powell  was 
handsome,  and  we  may  be  sure  that  it  would  have  heen 
mentioned  if  she  had  been.  But  she  had  youth,  and 
country  freshness ;  her  "  unlivcliness  and  natural  sloth 
unfit  for  conversation"  passed  as  "the  bashful  muteness 
of  a  virgin  f  and  if  a  doubt  intruded  that  he  was  being 
too  hasty,  Milton  may  have  thought  that  a  girl  of  seven- 
teen could  be  moulded  at  pleasure. 

He  was  too  soon  undeceived.  His  dream  of  married 
happiness  barely  lasted  out  the  honeymoon.  He  found 
that  he  had  mated  himself  to  a  clod  of  earth,  who  not 
only  was  not  now,  but  had  not  the  capacity  of  becoming, 
a  helpmeet  for  him.  With  Milton,  as  with  the  whole 
Calvinistic  and  Puritan  Europe,  woman  was  a  creature  of 
an  inferior  and  subordinate  class.  Man  was  the  final 
cause  of  God's  creation,  and  woman  was  there  to  minister 
to  this  nobler  being.  In  his  dogmatic  treatise,  De 
doctrina  Christiana,  Milton  formulated  this  sentiment 
in  the  thesis,  borrowed  from  the  schoolmen,  that  the 
soul  was  communicated  "  in  semine  patris."  The  cavalier 
section  of  society  had  inherited  the  sentiment  of  chivalry, 
and  contrasted  with  the  roundhead  not  more  by  its  loyalty 
to  the  person  of  the  prince,  than  by  its  recognition  of  the 
superior  grace  and  refinement  of  womanhood.  Even  in 
the  debased  and  degenerate  epoch  of  court  life  which 
followed  1660,  the  forms  and  language  of  homage  still 
preserved  the  tradition  of  a  nobler  scheme  of  manners. 
The  Puritan  had  thrown  off  chivalry  as  being  parcel  of 
Catholicism,  and  had  replaced  it  by  the  Hebrew  ideal  of 
the  subjection  and  seclusion  of  woman.  Milton,  in  whose 
mind  the  rigidity  of  Puritan  doctrine  was  now  contending 


v.]  MARRIAGE.  55 

with  the  freer  spirit  of  culture  and  romance,  shows  on 
the  present  occasion  a  like  conflict  of  doctrine  with 
sentiment.  While  he  adopts  the  oriental  hypothesis  of 
woman  for  the  sake  of  man,  he  modifies  it  by  laying 
more  stress  upon  mutual  affection,  the  charities  of  home, 
and  the  intercommunion  of  intellectual  and  moral  life, 
than  upon  that  ministration  of  woman  to  the  appetite 
and  comforts  of  man,  which  makes  up  the  whole  of  her 
functions  in  the  Puritan  apprehension.  The  failure  in 
his  own  case  to  obtain  this  genial  companionship  of  soul, 
which  he  calls  "the  gentlest  end  of  marriage,"  is  what 
gave  the  keenest  edge  to  his  disappointment  in  his  matri- 
monial venture. 

Eut  however  keenly  he  felt  and  regretted  the  precipi- 
tancy which  had  yoked  him  for  life  to  "  a  mute  and 
spiritless  mate,"  the  breach  did  not  come  from  his  side. 
The  girl  herself  conceived  an  equal  repugnance  to  the 
husband  she  had  thoughtlessly  accepted,  probably  on  the 
strength  of  his  good  looks,  which  was  all  of  Milton  that 
she  was  capable  of  appreciating.  A  young  bride,  taken 
suddenly  from  the  freedom  of  a  jovial  and  an  undisci- 
plined home,  rendered  more  lax  by  civd  confusion  and  easy 
intercourse  with  the  officers  of  the  royalist  garrison,  and 
committed  to  the  sole  society  of  a  stranger,  and  that 
stranger  possessing  the  rights  of  a  husband,  and  expecting 
much  from  all  who  lived  with  him,  may  not  unnaturally 
have  been  seized  with  panic  terror,  and  wished  herself 
home  again.  The  young  Mrs.  Milton  not  only  wished  it, 
but  incited  her  family  to  write  and  beg  that  she  might  be 
allowed  to  go  home  to  stay  the  remainder  of  the  summer. 
The  request  to  quit  her  husband  at  the  end  of  the  first 
month  was  so  unreasonable,  that  the  parents  would 
hardly  have  made  it  if  they  had  not  suspected  some  pro- 


56  SECOND  PERIOD.     lGiO-1660.  [chap. 

found  cause  of  estrangement.  ISor  could  Milton  have 
consented,  as  he  did,  to  so  extreme  a  remedy,  unless  he 
had  felt  that  the  case  required  no  less,  and  that  her 
mother's  advice  and  influence  were  the  most  availahle 
means  of  awakening  his  wife  to  a  sense  of  her  duty. 
Milton's  consent  was  therefore  given.  He  may  have 
thought  it  desirahle  she  should  go,  and  thus  Mrs.  Powell 
would  not  have  been  going  very  much  beyond  the  truth 
when  she  pretended  some  years  afterwards  that  her  son- 
indaw  had  turned  away  his  wife  for  a  long  space. 

Mary  Milton  went  to  Forest  Hill  in  July,  but  on  the 
understanding  that  she  was  to  come  back  at  Michaelmas. 
"When  the  appointed  time  came,  she  did  not  appear.  Mil- 
ton wrote  for  her  to  come.  JS"o  answer.  Several  other 
letters  met  the  same  fate.  At  last  he  despatched  a  foot 
messenger  to  Forest  Hill  desiring  her  return.  The 
messenger  came  back  only  to  report  that  he  had  been 
"  dismissed  with  some  sort  of  contempt."  It  was  evident 
that  Mary  Milton's  family  had  espoused  her  cause  as 
against  her  husband.  "Whatever  may  have  been  the 
secret  motive  of  their  conduct,  they  explained  the  quarrel 
politically,  and  began  to  repent,  so  Phillips  thought,  of 
having  matched  the  eldest  daughter  of  their  house  with  a 
violent  Presbyterian. 

If  Milton  had  "  hasted  too  eagerly  to  light  the  nuptial 
torch,"  he  had  been  equally  ardent  in  his  calculations  of 
the  domestic  happiness  upon  which  he  was  to  enter.  His 
poet's  imagination  had  invested  a  dull  and  common  girl 
with  rare  attributes  moral  and  intellectual,  and  had  pic- 
tured for  him  the  state  of  matrimony  as  an  earthly  paradise, 
in  which  he  was  to  be  secure  of  a  response  of  affection 
showing  itself  in  a  communion  of  intelligent  interests. 
In  proportion  to  the  brilliancy  of  his  ideal  anticipation 


v.]  PAMPHLETS  ON  DIVORCE.  57 

was  the  fury  of  despair  which  came  upon  him  when  he 
found  out  his  mistake.  A  common  man,  in  a  common 
age,  would  have  vented  his  vexation  upon  the  individual. 
Milton,  living  at  a  time  when  controversy  turned  away 
from  details,  and  sought  to  dig  down  to  the  roots  of  every 
question,  instead  of  urging  the  hardships  of  his  own  case, 
set  to  to  consider  the  institution  of  marriage  in  itself.  He 
published  a  pamphlet  with  the  title,  The  Doctrine  and 
Discipline  of  Divorce,  at  first  anonymously,  hut  putting 
his  name  to  a  second  edition,  much  enlarged.  He  further 
reinforced  this  argument  in  chief  with  three  supplementary 
pamphlets,  partly  in  answer  to  opponents  and  objectors  ; 
for  there  was  no  lack  of  opposition,  indeed  of  outcry  loud 
and  fierce. 

A  biographer  closely  scans  the  pages  of  these  pam- 
phlets, not  for  the  sake  of  their  direct  argument,  but  to 
see  if  he  can  extract  from  them  any  indirect  hints  of  their 
author's  personal  relations.  There  is  found  in  them  no 
mention  of  Milton's  individual  case.  Had  we  no  other 
information,  we  should  not  be  authorised  to  infer  from 
them  that  the  question  of  the  marriage  tie  was  more  than 
an  abstract  question  with  the  author. 

But  though  all  mention  of  his  own  case  is  studiously 
avoided  by  Milton,  his  pamphlet,  when  read  by  the  light 
of  Phillips's  brief  narrative,  does  seem  to  give  some  assis- 
tance in  apprehending  the  circumstances  of  this  obscure 
passage  of  the  poet's  life.  The  mystery  has  always  been 
felt  by  the  biographers,  but  has  assumed  a  darker  hue 
since  the  discovery  by  Mr.  Masson  of  a  copy  of  the  first 
edition  of  The  Doctrine  and  Discipline  of  Divorce,  with 
the  written  date  of  August  1.  According  to  Phillips's 
narrative,  the  pamphlet  was  engendered  by  Milton's 
indignation  at  his  wife's  contemptuous  treatment  of  him, 


58  SECOND  PERIOD.     1C40  -1C60.  [chap. 

in  refusing  to  keep  the  engagement  to  return  at  Michael- 
mas, and  would  therefore  he  composed  in  Octoher  and 
November,  time  enough  to  allow  for  the  sale  of  the  edition, 
and  the  preparation  of  the  enlarged  edition,  which  came 
out  in  February,  1644.  But  if  the  date  "  August  1  "  for 
the  first  edition  he  correct,  we  have  to  suppose  that  Milton 
was  occupying  himself  with  the  composition  of  a  vehe- 
ment and  impassioned  argument  in  favour  of  divorce  for 
incompatibility  of  temper,  during  the  honeymoon  !  Such 
behaviour  on  Milton's  part,  he  being  thirty-five,  towards  a 
girl  of  seventeen,  to  whom  he  was  bound  to  show  all 
loving  tenderness,  is  so  horrible,  that  a  suggestion  has  been 
made  that  there  was  a  more  adequate  cause  for  his  dis- 
pleasure, a  suggestion  which  Milton's  biographer  is  bound 
to  notice,  even  if  he  does  not  adopt  it.  The  suggestion, 
which  I  believe  was  first  made  by  a  writer  in  the 
Athenaeum,  is  that  Milton's  young  wife  refused  him  the 
consummation  of  the  marriage.  The  supposition  is 
founded  upon  a  certain  passage  in  Milton's  pamphlet. 

If  the  early  date  of  the  pamphlet  be  the  true  date ;  if 
the  Doctrine  and  Discipline  was  in  the  hands  of  the 
public  on  August  1  ;  if  Milton  was  brooding  over  this 
seething  agony  of  passion  all  through  July,  with  the  young 
bride,  to  whom  he  had  been  barely  wedded  a  month,  in 
the  house  where  he  was  writing,  then  the  only  apology  for 
this  outrage  upon  the  charities,  not  to  say  decencies,  of 
home  is  that  which  is  suggested  by  the  passage  referred 
to.  Then  the  pamphlet,  however  imprudent,  becomes  par- 
donable. It  is  a  passionate  cry  from  the  depths  of  a  great 
despair ;  another  evidence  of  the  noble  purity  of  a  nature 
which  refused  to  console  itself  as  other  men  would  have 
consoled  themselves  ;  a  nature  which,  instead  of  an 
egotistical  whine  for  its  own  deliverance,  sets   itself  to 


v.]  PAMPHLETS  ON  DIVORCE.  59 

plead  the  common  cause  of  man  and  of  society.  He  gives 
no  intimation  of  any  individual  interest,  but  his  argument 
throughout  glows  with  a  white  heat  of  concealed  emotion, 
such  as  could  only  be  stirred  by  the  sting  of  some  per- 
sonal and  present  misery. 

Notwithstanding  the  amount  of  free  opinion  abroad  in 
England,  or  at  least  in  London,  at  this  date,  Milton's 
divorce  pamphlets  created  a  sensation  of  that  sort  which 
Gibbon  is  fond  of  calling  a  scandal.  A  scandal,  in  this 
sense,  must  always  arise  in  your  own  party  ;  you  cannot 
scandalise  the  enemy.  And  so  it  was  now.  The  Episco- 
palians were  rejoiced  that  Milton  should  ruin  his  credit 
with  his  own  side  by  advocating  a  paradox.  The  Presby- 
terians hastened  to  disown  a  man  who  enabled  their 
opponents  to  brand  their  religious  scheme  as  the  parent 
of  moral  heresies.  For  though  church  government  and 
the  English  constitution  in  all  its  parts  had  begun  to  be 
open  questions,  speculation  had  not  as  yet  attacked  either 
of  the  two  bases  of  society,  property  or  the  family.  Loud 
was  the  outcry  of  the  Philistines.  There  was  no  doubt 
that  the  rigid  bonds  of  Presbyterian  orthodoxy  would  not 
in  any  case  have  long  held  Milton.  They  were  snapped 
at  once  by  the  publication  of  his  opinions  on  divorce,  and 
Milton  is  henceforward  to  be  ranked  among  the  most 
independent  of  the  new  party  which  shortly  after  this 
date  began  to  be  heard  of  under  the  name  of  Inde- 
pendents. 

But  the  men  who  formed  the  nucleus  of  this  new  mode 
of  thinking  were  as  yet,  in  1643,  not  consolidated  into  a 
sect,  still  less  was  their  importance  as  the  coming  political 
party  dreamt  of.  At  present  they  were  units,  only  drawn 
to  each  other  by  the  sympathy  of  opinion.  The  contempt 
tuous  epithets,   Anabaptist,   Antinomian,   &c,    could  be 


60  SECOND  PERIOD.     1640—1660.  [chap. 

levelled  against  them  with  fatal  effect  by  every  Philistine, 
and  were  freely  used  on  this  occasion  against  Milton.  He 
says  of  himself  that  he  now  lived  in  a  world  of  dis- 
csteem.  Nor  was  there  wanting,  to  complete  his  dis- 
comfiture, the  practical  parody  of  the  doctrine  of  divorce. 
A  Mistress  Attaway,  lacewoman  in  Bell-alley,  and  she- 
preacher  in  Coleman-street,  had  been  reading  Master 
Milton's  book,  and  remembered  that  she  had  an  unsanc- 
tified  husband,  who  did  not  speak  the  language  of  Canaan. 
She  further  reflected  that  Mr.  Attaway  was  not  only 
unsauctified,  but  was  also  absent  with  the  army,  while 
William  Jenney  was  on  the  spot,  and,  like  herself,  also 
a  preacher.  Could  a  "  scandalised  "  Presbyterian  help 
pointing  the  finger  of  triumphant  scorn  at  such  examples, 
the  natural  fruits  of  that  mischievous  book,  The  Doctrine 
and  Discipline  ? 

Beyond  the  stage  of  scandal  and  disesteem  the  matter 
did  not  proceed.  In  dedicating  The  Doctrine  and  Dis- 
cipline to  the  Parliament,  Milton  had  specially  called  on 
that  assembly  to  legislate  for  the  relief  of  men  who  were 
encumbered  with  unsuitable  spouses.  Wo  notice  was 
taken  of  this  appeal,  as  there  was  far  other  work  on  hand, 
and  no  particular  pressure  from  without  in  the  .direction 
of  Milton's  suit.  Divorce  for  incompatibility  of  temper 
remained  his  private  crotchet,  or  obtained  converts  only 
among  his  fellow-sufferers,  who,  however  numerous,  did 
not  form  a  body  important  enough  to  enforce  by  clamour 
their  demand  for  relief. 

Milton  was  not  very  well  pleased  to  find  that  the  Par- 
liament had  no  ear  for  the  bitter  cry  of  distress  wrung 
from  their  ardent  admirer  and  staunch  adherent.  Accord- 
ingly, in  1645,  in  dedicating  the  last  of  the  divorce  pam- 
phlets, which  he  entitled  Tetrachordon,  to  the  Parliament, 


v.]  PAMPHLETS  ON  DIVORCE.  61 

he  concluded  with  a  threat,  "  If  the  law  make  not  a  timely 
provision,  let  the  law,  as  reason  is,  hear  the  censure  of  the 
conseqiiences." 

This  threat  he  was  prepared  to  put  in  execution,  and 
did,  in  1645,  as  Phillips  tells  us,  contemplate  a  union, 
which  could  not  have  heen  a  marriage,  with  another 
woman.  He  was  ahle  at  this  time  to  find  some  part  of 
that  solace  of  conversation  which  his  wife  failed  to  give 
him,  among  his  female  acquaintance.  Especially  we  find 
him  at  home  in  the  house  of  one  of  the  Parliamentary 
women,  the  Lady  Margaret  Ley,  a  lady  "  of  great  wit  and 
ingenuity,"  the  "  honoured  Margaret "  of  Sonnet  x.  But 
the  Lady  Margaret  was  a  married  woman,  "being  the  wife 
of  a  Captain  Hohson,  a  "  very  accomplished  gentleman," 
of  the  Isle  of  Wight.  The  young  lady  who  was  the 
object  of  his  attentions,  and  who,  if  she  were  the  "  vir- 
tuous young  lady"  of  Sonnet  ix.,  was  "in  the  prime  of 
earliest  youth,"  was  a  daughter  of  a  Dr.  Davis,  of  whom 
nothing  else  is  now  known.  She  is  described  by  Phillips, 
who  may  have  seen  her,  as  a  very  handsome  and  witty 
gentlewoman.  Though  Milton  was  ready  to  brave  public 
opinion,  Miss  Davis  was  not.  And  so  the  suit  hung, 
when  all  schemes  of  the  kind  were  put  an  end  to  by  the 
unexpected  submission  of  Mary  Powell. 

Since  October,  1643,  when  Milton's  messenger  had  been 
dismissed  from  Forest  Hill,  the  face  of  the  civil  struggle 
was  changed.  The  Presbyterian  army  had  been  replaced  by 
that  of  the  Independents,  and  the  immediate  consequence 
had  been  the  decline  of  the  royal  cause,  consummated  by 
its  total  ruin  on  the  day  of  ISTaseby,  in  June,  1645. 
Oxford  was  closely  invested,  Forest  Hill  occupied  by  the 
besiegers,  and  the  Powell  family  compelled  to  take  refuge 
within  the  lines  of  the  city.     Financial  bankruptcy,  too, 


H2  SECOND  PERIOD.     1640—1660.  [chap. 

Lad  overtaken  the  Powells.  These  influences,  rather 
than  any  rumours  which  may  have  reached  them  of 
Milton's  designs  in  regard  to  Miss  Davis,  wrought  a 
change  in  the  views  of  the  Powell  family.  By  the 
triumph  of  the  Independents  Mr.  Milton  was  hecome  a 
man  of  consideration,  and  might  he  useful  as  a  protector. 
They  concluded  that  the  hest  thing  they  could  do  was  to 
seek  a  reconciliation.  There  were  not  wanting  friends  of 
Milton's  also,  some  perhaps  divining  his  secret  discontent, 
who  thought  that  such  reconciliation  would  he  hetter  for 
him  too,  than  perilling  his  happiness  upon  the  experiment 
of  an  illegal  connexion.  A  conspiracy  of  the  friends  of 
hoth  parties  contrived  to  introduce  Mary  Powell  into  a 
house  where  Milton  often  visited  in  St.  Martin'sde-Grand. 
She  was  secreted  in  an  adjoining  room,  on  an  occasion 
when  Milton  was  known  to  he  coming,  and  he  was  sur- 
prised by  seeing  her  suddenly  brought  in,  throw  herself 
on  her  knees,  and  ask  to  be  forgiven.  The  poor  young 
thing,  now  two  years  older  and  wiser,  but  still  only 
nineteen,  pleaded,  truly  or  falsely,  that  her  mother  "had 
been  all  along  the  chief  promoter  of  her  frowardness." 
Milton,  with  a  "  noble  leonine  clemency  "  which  became 
him,  cared  not  for  excuses  for  the  past.  It  was  enough 
that  she  was  come  back,  and  was  willing  to  live  with  him 
as  his  wife.  He  received  her  at  once,  and  not  only  her, 
but  on  the  surrender  of  Oxford,  in  June,  1646,  and  the 
sequestration  of  Forest  Hill,  took  in  the  whole  family  of 
Powells,  including  the  mother-in-law,  whose  influence  with 
her  daughter  might  even  again  trouble  his  peace. 

It  is  impossible  not  to  see  that  Milton  had  this  impres- 
sive scene,  enacted  in  St.  Martin'sde-Grand  in  1645, 
before  his  mind,  when  he  wrote,  twenty  years  afterwards, 
the  lines  in  Paradise  Lost,  x.  937  : — 


v.]  RECONCILIATION  WITH  HIS  WIFE.  63 

.  .  .  Eve,  with  tears  that  ceas'd  not  flowing 
And  tresses  all  disorder'd,  at  his  feet 
Fell  humble,  and  embracing  them,  besought 
His  peace  . 

.  .  .  Her  lowly  plight 
Immovable,  till  peace  obtain' d  from  fault 
Acknowledg'd  and  deplor'd,  in  Adam  wrought 
Commiseration ;  soon  his  heart  relented 
Tow'rds  her,  his  life  so  late  and  sole  delight, 
Now  at  his  feet  submissive  in  distress  ! 
Creature  so  fair  his  reconcilement  seeking, 

•p  *F  T*  V  "P 

At  once  disarm' d,  his  anger  all  he  lost. 

The  garden-house  in  Aldersgate-street  had  before  been 
found  too  small  for  the  pupils  who  were  being  now 
pressed  upon  Milton.  It  was  to  a  larger  house  in  Bar- 
bican, a  side  street  leading  out  of  Aldersgate,  that  he 
brought  the  Powells  and  Mary  Milton.  Milton  probably- 
abated  his  exactions  on  the  point  of  companionship,  and 
learned  to  be  content  with  her  acquiescence  in  the  duties 
of  a  wife.  In  July,  1646,  she  became  a  mother,  and  bore 
in  all  four  children.  Of  these,  three,  all  daughters,  lived 
to  grow  up.  Mary  Milton  herself  died  in  giving  birth  to 
the  fourth  child  in  the  summer  of  1652.  She  was  only 
twenty-six,  and  had  been  married  to  Milton  nine  years. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

PAMPHLETS. 

We  have  now  seen  Milton  engaged  in  teaching  and 
writing  on  education,  involved  in  domestic  unhappiness, 
and  speculating  on  the  obligations  of  marriage.  But 
neither  of  these  topics  formed  the  principal  occupation  of 
his  mind  during  these  years.  He  had  renounced  a  cherished 
scheme  of  travel  because  his  countrymen  were  engaged  at 
home  in  contending  for  their  liberties,  and  it  could  not 
but  be  that  the  gradually  intensified  stages  of  that  struggle 
engrossed  his  interest,  and  claimed  his  participation. 

So  imperative  did  he  regard  this  claim  that  he  allowed 
it  to  override  the  purposed  dedication  of  his  life  to  poetry. 
Not  indeed  for  ever  and  aye,  but  for  a  time.  As  he  had 
renounced  Greece,  the  ^Egean  Isles,  Thebes,  and  the  East 
for  the  fight  for  freedom,  so  now  to  the  same  cause  he 
postponed  tho  composition  of  his  epic  of  Arthurian 
romance,  or  whatever  his  mind  "in  the  spacious  circuits  of 
her  musing  proposed  to  herself  of  highest  hope  and  hardest 
attempting."  No  doubt  at  first,  in  thus  deferring  the 
work  of  his  life,  lie  thought  the  delay  would  be  for  a 
brief  space.  Ho  did  not  foresee  that  having  once  taken 
an  oar,  he  would  be  chained  to  it  for  more  than  twenty 


ch.  vi.]  PAMPHLETS.  65 

years,  and  that  lie  would  finally  owe  his  release  to  the 
ruin  of  the  cause  he  had  served.  But  for  the  Restoration 
and  the  overthrow  of  the  Puritans,  we  should  never  have 
had  the  great  Puritan  epic. 

The  period  then  of  his  political  activity  is  to  he  re- 
garded as  an  episode  in  the  life  of  the  poet  Milton.  It 
is  indeed  an  episode  which  fills  twenty  years,  and  those 
the  most  vigorous  years  of  manhood,  from  his  thirty- 
second  to  his  fifty-second  year.  He  himself  was  con- 
scious of  the  sacrifice  he  was  making,  and  apologises  to 
the  puhlic  for  thus  defrauding  them  of  the  "better  work 
which  he  stood  pledged  to  execute.  As  he  puts  it,  there 
was  no  choice  for  him.  He  could  not  help  himself,  at 
this  critical  juncture,  "  when  the  Church  of  God  was  at 
the  foot  of  her  insulting  enemies  ;"  he  would  never  have 
ceased  to  reproach  himself,  if  he  had  refused  to  employ 
the  fruits  of  his  studies  in  her  hehalf.  He  saw  also  that  a 
generation  inflamed  by  the  passions  of  conflict,  and  look- 
ing in  hreathless  suspense  for  the  issue  of  battles,  was  not 
in  a  mood  to  attend  to  poetry.  ISTor,  indeed,  was  he 
ready  to  write,  "not  having  yet  (this  is  in  1642)  com- 
pleted to  my  mind  the  full  circle  of  my  private  studies." 

But  though  he  is  drawn  into  the  strife  against  his  will, 
and  in  defiance  of  his  genius,  when  he  is  in  it,  he  throws 
into  it  the  whole  vehemence  of  his  nature.  The  pam- 
phlet period,  I  have  said,  is  an  episode  in  the  life  of  the 
poet.  But  it  is  a  genuine  part  of  Milton's  life.  However 
his  ambition  may  have  been  set  upon  an  epic  crown,  his 
zeal  for  what  he  calls  the  church  was  an  equal  passion, 
nay  had,  in  his  judgment,  a  paramount  claim  upon  him. 
He  is  a  zealot  among  the  zealots  ;  his  cause  is  the  cause 
of  God ;  and  the  sword  of  the  Independents  is  the 
sword  of  the  Lord  and  of  Gideon.     He  does  not  refute 

F 


66  SECOND  PEEIOD.    1610-1660.  [chap. 

opponents,  but  curses  enemies.  Yet  his  rage,  even  when 
most  delirious,  is  always  a  Miltonic  rage  ;  it  is  grand, 
sublime,  terrible  !  Mingled  with  the  scurrilities  of  the 
theological  brawl  are  passages  of  the  noblest  English  ever 
written.  Hartley  Coleridge  explains  the  dulness  of  the 
wit-combats  in  Shakspeare  and  Jonson,  on  the  ground 
that  repartee  is  the  accomplishment  of  lighter  thinkers 
and  a  less  earnest  age.  So  of  Milton's  pamphlets  it  must 
be  said  that  he  was  not  fencing  for  pastime,  but  fighting 
for  all  he  held  most  worthy.  He  had  to  think  only  of 
making  his  blows  tell.  When  a  battle  is  raging,  and  my 
friends  are  sorely  pressed,  am  I  not  to  help  because  good 
manners  forbid  the  shedding  of  blood  1 

No  good  man  can,  with  impunity,  addict  himself  to 
party.  And  the  best  men  will  suffer  most,  because  their 
conviction  of  the  goodness  of  their  cause  is  deeper.  But 
when  one  with  the  sensibility  of  a  poet  throws  himself 
into  the  excitements  of  a  struggle,  he  is  certain  to  lose 
his  balance.  The  endowment  of  feeling  and  imagination 
which  qualifies  him  to  be  the  ideal  interpreter  of  life, 
unfits  him  for  participation  in  that  real  life,  through  the 
manoeuvres  and  compromises  of  which  reason  is  the  only 
guide,  and  where  imagination  is  as  much  misplaced  as  it 
would  be  in  a  game  of  chess.  "  The  ennobling  difference 
between  one  man  and  another  is  that  one  feels  more  than 
another."  Milton's  capacity  of  emotion,  when  once  he 
became  champion  of  a  cause,  could  not  be  contained 
within  the  bounds  of  ordinary  speech.  It  breaks  into 
ferocious  reprobation,  into  terrific  blasts  of  vituperation, 
beneath  which  the  very  language  creaks,  as  the  timbers 
of  a  ship  in  a  storm.  Corruptio  optimi  pessima.  The 
archangel  is  recognisable  by  the  energy  of  his  malice. 
"Were   all  those   accomplishments,   those  many  studious 


vi.]  PAMPHLETS.  G7 

years  hiving  wisdom,  the  knowledge  of  all  the  tongues, 
the  command  of  all  the  thoughts  of  all  the  ages,  and  that 
wealth  of  English  expression — were  all  these  acquirements 
only  of  use,  that  their  possessor  might  vie  in  defamation 
with  an  Edwards  or  a  Du  Moulin  ] 

Eor  it  should  be  noted  that  these  pamphlets,  now  only 
serving  as  a  record  of  the  prostitution  of  genius  to  political 
party,  were,  at  the  time  at  which  they  appeared,  of  no  use 
to  the  cause  in  which  they  were  written.  Writers,  with 
a  professional  tendency  to  magnify  their  office,  have  always 
been  given  to  exaggerate  the  effect  of  printed  words. 
There  are  examples  of  thought  having  been  influenced  by 
books.  But  such  books  have  been  scientific,  not  rhetorical. 
Milton's  pamphlets  are  not  works  of  speculation,  or  philo- 
sophy, or  learning,  or  solid  reasoning  on  facts.  They 
•  are  inflammatory  appeals,  addressed  to  the  passions  of 
the  hour.  He  who  was  meditating  the  erection  of  an 
enduring  creation,  such  as  the  world  "  would  not  wil- 
lingly let  die,"  was  content  to  occupy  himself  with  the 
most  ephemeral  of  all  hackwork.  His  own  polemical 
writings  may  be  justly  described  in  the  words  he  himself 
uses  of  a  book  by  one  of  his  opponents,  as  calculated  "  to 
gain  a  short,  contemptible,  and  soon-fading  reward,  not  to 
stir  the  constancy  and  solid  firmness  of  any  wise  man  .... 
but  to  catch  the  worthless  ajiprobation  of  an  inconstant, 
irrational,  and  image-doting  rabble." 

It  would  have  been  not  unnatural  that  the  public 
school  and  university  man,  the  admirer  of  Shakspeare 
and  the  old  romances,  the  pet  of  Italian  academies,  the 
poet-scholar,  himself  the  author  of  two  Masks,  who  was 
nursing  his  wings  for  a  new  flight  into  the  realms  of 
verse,  should  have  sided  with  the  cavaliers  against  the 
Puritans,  with  the  party  of  culture  and  the  humanities 

F  2 


6S  SECOND  PERIOD.    1610-1660.  [chap. 

against  the  party  which  shut  up  the  theatres  and  despised 
profane  learning.  But  we  have  seen  that  there  was 
another  side  to  Milton's  mind.  This  may  he  spoken  of 
as  his  other  self,  the  Puritan  self,  and  regarded  as  in 
internal  conflict  with  the  poet's  self.  His  twenty  years' 
pamphlet  warfare  may  he  presented  hy  his  "biographer  as 
the  expression  of  the  Puritanic  Milton,  who  shall  have 
heen  driven  back  upon  his  suppressed  instincts  as  a  poet 
hy  the  ruin  of  his  political  hopes.  This  chart  of  Milton's 
life  is  at  once  simple  and  true.  But  like  all  physiological 
diagrams  it  falls  short  of  the  suhtlety  and  complexity  of 
human  character.  A  study  of  the  pamphlets  will  show  that 
the  poet  is  all  there,  indeed  only  too  openly  for  influence  on 
opinion,  and  that  the  hlighted  hope  of  the  patriot  lends  a 
secret  pathos  to  Paradise  Lost  and  Samson  Agonistes. 

This  other  element  in  Milton  is  not  accurately  named 
Puritanism.  Even  the  term  republicanism  is  a  coarse  and 
conventional  description  of  that  sentiment  which  domi- 
nated his  whole  being,  and  which  is  the  inspiration  at  once 
of  his  poetry  and  of  his  prose.  To  give  a  name  to  this 
sentiment,  I  must  call  it  the  love  of  liberty.  It  was  an 
aspiration  at  once  real  and  vague,  after  a  new  order  of 
things,  an  order  in  which  the  old  injustices  and  oppres- 
sions should  cease  ;  after  a  new  Jerusalem,  a  millennium, 
a  Utopia,  an  Oceana.  Its  aim  was  to  realise  in  political 
institutions  that  great  instauration  of  which  Bacon  dreamed 
in  the  world  of  intelligence.  It  was  much  more  negative 
than  affirmative,  and  knew  better,  as  we  all  do,  how  good 
was  hindered  than  how  it  should  be  promoted.  "  I  did 
hut  prompt  the  age  to  quit  their  clogs."  Milton  embodied, 
more  perfectly  than  any  of  his  cotemporaries,  this  spirit 
of  the  age.  It  is  the  ardent  aspiration  after  the  pure  and 
noble   life,  the   aspiration  which   stamps   every  line  he 


vi.]  PAMPHLETS.  69 

wrote,  verse  or  prose,  with  a  dignity  as  of  an  heroic  age. 
This  gives  consistency  to  all  his  utterances.  The  doctri- 
naire republican  of  to-day  cannot  understand  how  the 
man  who  approved  the  execution  of  the  would-be  despot 
Charles  Stuart,  should  have  been  the  hearty  supporter  of 
the  real  autocrat  Oliver  Cromwell.  Milton  was  not  the 
slave  of  a  name.  He  cared  not  for  the  word  republic, 
so  as  it  was  well  with  the  commonwealth.  Parliaments 
or  single  rulers,  he  knew,  are  but  means  to  an  end ;  if 
that  end  was  obtained,  no  matter  if  the  constitutional 
guarantees  exist  or  not.  Many  of  Milton's  pamphlets  are 
certainly  party  pleadings,  choleric,  one-sided,  personal. 
But  through  them  all  runs  the  one  redeeming  charac- 
teristic— that  they  are  all  written  on  the  side  of  liberty. 
He  defended  religious  liberty  against  the  prelates,  civil 
liberty  against  the  crown,  the  liberty  of  the  press  against 
the  executive,  liberty  of  conscience  against  the  Presby- 
terians, and  domestic  liberty  against  the  tyranny  of  canon 
law.  Milton's  pamphlets  might  have  been  stamped  with 
the  motto  which  Selden  inscribed  (in  Greek)  in  all  his 
books,  "  Liberty  before  everything." 

One  virtue  these  pamphlets  possess,  the  virtue  of  style. 
They  are  monuments  of  our  language  so  remarkable  that 
Milton's  prose  works  must  always  be  resorted  to  by 
students,  as  long  as  English  remains  a  medium  of  ideas. 
Yet  even  on  the  score  of  style,  Milton's  prose  is  subject 
to  serious  deductions.  His  negligence  is  such  as  to 
amount  to  an  absence  of  construction.  He  who,  in  his 
verse,  trained  the  sentence  with  delicate  sensibility  to 
follow  his  guiding  hand  into  excpuisite  syntax,  seems  in 
his  prose  writing  to  abandon  his  meaning  to  shift  for 
itself.  Here  Milton  compares  disadvantageously  with 
Hooker.     Hooker's  elaborate  sentence,  like  the  sentence 


70  SECOND  PEEIOD.    1610-1660.  Lciiap. 

of  Demosthenes,  is  composed  of  parts  so  hinged,  of  clauses 
so  subordinated  to  the  main  thought,  that  we  foresee  the 
end  from  the  beginning,  and  close  the  period  with  a  sense 
of  perfect  roundness  and  totality.  Milton  does  not  seem 
to  have  any  notion  of  what  a  period  means.  He  begins 
anywhere,  and  leaves  off,  not  when  the  sense  closes, 
but  when  he  is  out  of  breath.  We  might  have  thought 
this  pell-mell  huddle  of  his  words  was  explained,  if  not 
excused,  by  the  exigencies  of  the  party  pamphlet,  which 
cannot  wait.  But  the  same  asyntactic  disorder  is  equally 
found  in  the  History  of  Britain,  which  he  had  in  hand 
for  forty  years.  Nor  is  it  only  the  Miltonic  sentence 
wbich  is  incoherent ;  the  whole  arrangement  of  his  topics 
is  equally  loose,  disjointed,  and  desultory.  His  inspira- 
tion comes  from  impulse.  Had  he  stayed  to  chastise  his 
emotional  writing  by  reason  and  the  laws  of  logic,  he  would 
have  deprived  himself  of  the  sources  of  his  strength. 

These  serious  faults  are  balanced  by  virtues  of  another 
kind.  Putting  Bacon  aside,  the  condensed  force  and 
poignant  brevity  of  whose  aphoristic  wisdom  has  no 
parallel  in  English,  there  is  no  other  prosaist  who  possesses 
anything  like  Milton's  command  over  the  resources  of  our 
language.  Milton  cannot  match  the  musical  harmony 
and  exactly  balanced  periods  of  his  predecessor  Hooker. 
He  is  without  the  power  of  varied  illustration,  and  accu- 
mulation of  ornamental  circumstance,  possessed  by  his 
contemporary,  Jeremy  Taylor  (1G13 — 16G7).  But  neither 
of  these  great  writers  impresses  the  reader  with  a  sense  of 
unlimited  power  such  as  wc  feel  to  reside  in  Milton. 
Yast  as  is  the  wealth  of  magnificent  words  which  he 
flings  with  both  hands  carelessly  upon  the  page,  we  feel 
that  there  is  still  much  more  in  reserve. 

The  critics  have  observed  (Collier's  Poetical  Decameron) 


vi.]  MILTON'S  PROSE.  71 

that  as  Milton  advanced  in  life  lie  gradually  disused  the 
compound  words  he  had  heen  in  the  hahit  of  making  for 
himself.  However  this  may  be,  his  words  are  the  words 
of  one  who  made  a  study  of  the  language,  as  a  poet 
studies  language,  searching  its  capacities  for  the  expression 
of  surging  emotion.  Jeremy  Taylor's  prose  is  poetical 
prose.  Milton's  prose  is  not  poetical  prose,  but  a 
different  thing,  the  prose  of  a  poet ;  not  like  Taylor's, 
loaded  with  imagery  on  the  outside ;  but  coloured  by 
imagination  from  within.  Milton  is  the  first  English 
writer  who,  possessing  in  the  ancient  models  a  standard 
of  the  effect  which  could  be  produced  by  choice  of  words, 
set  himself  to  the  conscious  study  of  our  native  tongue 
with  a  firm  faith  in  its  as  yet  undeveloped  powers  as  an 
instrument  of  thought. 

The  words  in  Milton's  poems  have  been  counted,  and 
it  appears  that  he  employs  8000,  while  Shakspeare's  plays 
and  poems  yield  about  15,000.  From  this  it  might  be 
inferred  that  the  Miltonic  vocabulary  is  only  half  as  rich 
as  that  of  Shakspeare.  But  no  inference  can  be  founded 
upon  the  absolute  number  of  words  used  by  any  writer. 
We  must  know,  not  the  total  of  different  words,  but 
the  }oroportion  of  different  words  to  the  whole  of  any 
writer's  words.  Now  to  furnish  a  list  of  100  different 
words  the  English  Bible  requires  531  common  words, 
Shakspeare  164,  Milton  135  only.  This  computation  is 
founded  on  the  poems  ;  it  would  be  curious  to  have  the 
same  test  tried  upon  the  prose  writings,  though  no  such 
test  can  be  as  trustworthy  as  the  educated  ear  of  a  listener 
to  a  continued  reading. 

It  is  no  part  of  a  succinct  biography,  such  as  the  present, 
to  furnish  an  account  in  detail  of  the  various  controversies 
of  the  time,  as  Milton  engaged  in  them.     The  reader  will 


72  SECOND  PERIOD.    16-10-1660.  [chap. 

doubtless  be  content  with  the  bare  indication  of  the  sub- 
jects on  which  he  wrote.  The  whole  number  of  Milton's 
political  pamphlets  is  twenty-five.  Of  these,  twenty-one 
are  written  in  English,  and  four  in  Latin.  Of  the  Tractate 
of  Education  and  the  four  divorce  pamphlets  something 
has  been  already  said.  Of  the  remaining  twenty,  nine, 
or  nearly  half,  relate  to  church  government,  or  ecclesiastical 
affairs  ;  eight  treat  of  the  various  crises  of  the  civil  strife ; 
and  two  are  personal  vindications  of  himself  against  one  of 
his  antagonists.  There  remains  one  tract  of  which  the 
subject  is  of  a  more  general  and  permanent  nature,  the 
best  known  of  all  the  series,  Areopagitica  :  A  Speech  for 
the  Liberty  of  unlicensed  Printing,  to  the  Parliament  of 
England.  The  whole  series  of  twenty-five  extends  over 
a  period  of  somewhat  less  than  twenty  years ;  the  earliest, 
viz.,  Of  Reformation  touching  Church  Discipline  in  Eng- 
land, and  the  Causes  that  hitherto  have  hindered  it,  having 
been  published  in  1641  ;  the  latest,  entitled,  ^4.  ready  and 
easy  way  to  establish  a  free  Commonwealth,  coming  out  in 
March,  16G0,  after  the  torrent  of  royalism  had  set  in, 
which  was  to  sweep  away  the  men  and  the  cause  to  which 
Milton  had  devoted  himself.  Milton's  pen  thus  accom- 
panied the  whole  of  the  Puritan  revolution  from  the 
modest  constitutional  opposition  in  which  it  commenced, 
through  its  unexpected  triumph,  to  its  crushing  overthrow 
by  the  royalist  and  clerical  reaction. 

The  autumn  of  1641  brought  with  it  a  sensible  lull  in 
the  storm  of  revolutionary  passion.  Indeed,  there  began 
to  appear  all  the  symptoms  of  a  reaction,  and  of  the 
formation  of  a  solid  conservative  party,  likely  to  be  strong 
enough  to  check,  or  even  to  suppress,  the  movement.  The 
impulse  seemed  to  have  spent  itself,  and  a  desire  for  rest 


vi.]  POLITICS.  73 

from  political  agitation  began  to  steal  over  the  nation. 
Autumn  and  the  harvest  turn  men's  thoughts  towards 
country  occupations  and  sports.  The  King  went  off  to 
Scotland  in  August ;  the  Houses  adjourned  till  the  20th 
October.  The  Scottish  army  had  been  paid  off,  and  had 
repassed  the  border;  the  Scottish  commissioners  and 
preachers  had  left  London. 

It  was  a  critical  moment  for  the  Puritan  party.  Some 
very  considerable  triumphs  they  had  gained.  The  arch- 
enemy Strafford  had  been  brought  to  the  block ;  Laud 
was  in  the  tower ;  the  leading  members  of  Convocation, 
bishops,  deans,  and  archdeacons,  had  been  heavily  fined ; 
the  Star  Chamber  and  the  High  Commission  Court  had 
been  abolished ;  the  Stannary  and  Forestal  jurisdictions 
restrained.  But  the  Puritan  movement  aimed  at  far  more 
than  this.  It  was  not  only  that  the  root-and-branch  men 
were  pushing  for  a  generally  more  levelling  policy,  but 
the  whole  Puritan  party  was  committed  to  a  struggle  with 
the  hierarchy  of  the  Established  Church.  It  was  not  so 
much  that  they  demanded  more  and  more  reform,  with 
the  growing  appetite  of  revolution,  but  that  as  long  as 
bishops  existed,  nothing  that  had  been  wrested  from  them 
was  secure.  The  Puritans  could  not  exist  in  safety  side 
by  side  with  a  church  whose  principle  was  that  there  was 
no  church  without  the  apostolic  succession.  The  abolition 
of  episcopacy  and  the  substitution  of  the  Presbyterian 
platform  was,  so  it  then  seemed,  a  bare  measure  of  neces- 
sary precaution,  and  not  merely  the  extravagant  demand 
of  dissatisfied  spirits.  Add  to  this,  that  it  was  well 
understood  by  those  near  enough  to  the  principal  actors 
in  the  drama,  that  the  concessions  made  by  the  Court 
had  been  easily  made,  because  they  coidd  be  taken  back, 
when  the  time  should  come,  with  equal  ease.     Even  the 


74  SECOND  PERIOD.    1610— 16G0.  [chap. 

most  moderate  men,  who  were  satisfied  with  the  amount 
of  reform  already  obtained,  must  have  tremhled  at  its 
insecurity.  The  Puritan  leaders  must  have  viewed  with 
dismay  the  tendency  in  the  nation  towards  a  reaction  in 
favour  of  things  as  they  were. 

It  was  upon  this  condition  of  the  public  mind  that 
Milton    persistently    poured    pamphlet   after    pamphlet, 
successive  vials  of  apocalyptic  wrath.     He  exhausts  all 
the  resources  of  rhetoric,  and  plays  upon  every  note  in  the 
gamut  of  public  feeling,  that  he  may  rouse  the  apathetic, 
confirm  the  wavering,  dumbfound  the  malignant ;  where 
there  was  zeal,  to  fan  it  into  flame;  where  there  was 
opposition,  to  cow  and  browheat  it  by  indignant  scorn  and 
terrific  denunciation.     The  first  of  these  manifestoes  was 
(1)  Of  Reformation  touching  Church  Discipline,  of  which 
I  have  already  spoken.     This  was  immediately  followed 
by  (2)  Of  Prelaticall  Episcopacy.     This  tract  was  a  reply, 
in  form,  to  a  publication  of  Archbishop  Usher.     It  was 
about   the    end   of  May,    1641,    that  Usher  had   come 
forward  on  the  breach  with  his  Judgment  of  Dr.  Rainolds 
touching  the  Original  of  Episcopacy.     Rainolds,  who  had 
been  President  of  Corpus  (1598— 1G07),  had  helonged  to 
the  Puritan  party  in  his  day,  had  refused  a  bishopric,  and 
was  known,  like  Usher  himself,  to  be  little  favourable  to 
the  exclusive  claims  of  the  high  prelatists.     He  was  thus 
an  unexceptionable  witness  to   adduce  in  favour  of  the 
apostolic  origin  of  the  distinction  between  bishop  and 
presbyter.     Usher,   in   editing   Rainolds'    opinions,    had 
backed  them  up  with  all  the  additional  citations  which 
his  vast  reading  could  supply. 

Milton  could  not  speak  with  the  weight  that  attached 
to  Usher,  the  most  learned  Churchman  of  the  ago,  who 
had  spent  eighteen  years  in  going  through  a  completo 


vi.]  PAMPHLETS.  75 

course  of  fathers  and  councils.  But,  in  the  first  paragraph 
of  his  answer,  Milton  adroitly  puts  the  controversy  upon 
a  footing  by  which  antiquarian  research  is  put  out  of 
court.  Episcopacy  is  either  of  human  or  divine  origin. 
If  of  human  origin,  it  may  he  either  retained  or  abolished, 
as  may  be  found  expedient.  If  of  divine  appointment,  it 
must  be  proved  to  be  so  out  of  Scripture.  If  this  cannot 
be  proved  out  of  inspired  Scripture,  no  accumulation  of 
merely  human  assertion  of  the  point  can  be  of  the  least 
authority.  Having  thus  shut  out  antiquity  as  evidence 
in  the  case,  he  proceeds  nevertheless  to  examine  his  oppo- 
nent's authorities,  and  sets  them  aside  by  a  style  of  argu- 
ment which  has  more  of  banter  than  of  criticism. 

One  incident  of  this  collision  between  Milton,  young 
and  unknown,  and  the  venerable  prelate,  whom  he  was 
assaulting  with  the  rude  wantonness  of  untempered  youth, 
deserves  to  be  mentioned  here.  Usher  had  incautiously 
included  the  Ignatian  epistles  among  his  authorities. 
This  laid  the  most  learned  man  of  the  day  at  the  mercy 
of  an  adversary  of  less  reading  than  himself.  Milton, 
who  at  least  knew  so  much  suspicion  of  the  genuineness 
of  these  remains  as  Casaubon's  Exercitations  on  Baronius 
and  Vedelin's  edition  (Geneva,  1623)  could  suggest, 
pounced  upon  this  critical  flaw,  and  delightedly  denounced 
in  trenchant  tones  this  "  Perkin  "Warbeck  of  Ignatius," 
and  the  "  supposititious  offspring  of  some  dozen  epistles." 
This  rude  shock  it  was  which  set  Usher  upon  a  more 
careful  examination  of  the  Ignatian  question.  The  result 
was  his  welbknown  edition  of  Ignatius,  printed  1642, 
though  not  published  till  1644,  in  which  he  acknow- 
ledged the  total  spuriousness  of  nine  epistles,  and  the 
partial  interpolation  of  the  other  six.  I  have  not  noticed 
in  Usher's   Prolegomena   that    he    alludes    to   Milton's 


7G  SECOND  PERIOD.    1610— 16G0.  [chap. 

onslaught.  JSbr,  indeed,  was  he  called  upon  to  do  so  in  a 
scientific  investigation,  as  Milton  had  brought  no  contribu- 
tion to  the  solution  of  the  question  beyond  sound  and  fury. 

Of  Milton's  third  pamphlet,  entitled  (3)  Animadversions 
on  the  Remonstrants'  defence  against  Smectymnuus,  it  need 
only  be  said  that  it  is  a  violent  personal  onfall  upon 
Joseph  Hall,  bishop,  first,  of  Exeter  and  afterwards  of 
Norwich.  The  bishop,  by  descending  into  the  arena  of 
controversy,  had  deprived  himself  of  the  privilege  which 
his  literary  eminence  should  have  secured  to  him.  But 
nothing  can  excuse  or  reconcile  us  to  the  indecent  scur- 
rility with  which  he  is  assailed  in  Milton's  pages,  which 
reflect  more  discredit  on  him  who  wrote  them,  than  on 
him  against  whom  they  are  written. 

The  fifth  pamphlet,  called  (5)  An  Apology  against  a 
Pamphlet  called,  "A  Modest  Confutation,  #c."  (1612),  is 
chiefly  remarkable  for  a  defence  of  his  own  Cambridge 
career.  A  man  who  throws  dirt,  as  Milton  did,  must  not 
be  surprised  if  some  of  it  comes  back  to  him.  A  son  of 
Bishop  Hall,  coming  forward  as  his  father's  champion 
and  avenger,  had  raked  up  a  garbled  version  of  Milton's 
quarrel  with  his  tutor  Chappell  (see  p.  6),  and  by  a 
further  distortion  had  brought  it  out  in  the  shape  that, 
"after  an  inordinate  and  violent  youth  spent  at  the 
university,"  Milton  had  been  "vomited  out  thence." 
From  the  university  this  "  alchemist  of  slander  "  follows 
him  to  the  city,  and  declares  that  where  Milton's  morn- 
ing haunts  are,  he  wisses  not,  but  that  his  afternoons  are 
spent  in  playhouses  and  bordelloes.  Milton  replies  to 
these  random  charges  by  a  lengthy  account  of  himself  and 
his  studious  habits.  As  the  reader  may  expect  a  specimen 
of  Milton's  prose  style,  I  quote  a  part  of  this  autobio- 
graphical paragraph : — 


vi.]  PAMPHLETS.  77 

"  I  had  my  time,  as  others  have  who  have  good  learning 
bestowed  upon  them,  to  be  sent  to  those  places  where  the 
opinion  was  it  might  be  sooner  attained ;  and,  as  the  manner 
is,  was  not  unstudied  in  those  authors  which  are  most  com- 
mended, whereof  some  were  grave  orators  and  historians,  whom 
methought  I  loved  indeed,  but  as  my  age  then  was,  so  I  under- 
stood them  ;  others  were  the  smooth  elegiac  poets,  whereof  the 
schools  are  not  scarce  ;  whom  both  for  the  pleasing  sound  of 
their  numerous  writing,  which  in  imitation  I  found  most  easy, 
and  most  agreeable  to  nature's  part  in  me,  and  for  their  matter, 
which  what  it  is  there  be  few  who  know  not,  I  was  so  allowed 

to  read,  that  no  recreation  came  to  me  better  welcome 

Whence  having  observed  them  to  account  it  the  chief  glory  of 
their  wit,  in  that  they  were  ablest  to  judge,  to  praise,  and  by 
that  could  esteem  themselves  worthiest  to  love  those  high  per- 
fections which  under  one  or  other  name  they  took  to  celebrate, 
I  thought  with  myself  by  eveiy  instinct  and  presage  of  nature 
which  is  not  wont  to  be  false,  that  what  emboldened  them  to 
this  task  might  with  such  diligence  as  they  used  embolden  me, 
and  that  what  judgment,  wit,  or  elegance  was  my  share,  would 
herein  best  appear  and  best  value  itself  by  how  much  more 
wisely  and  with  more  love  of  virtue   I  should  choose  (let  rude 

ears  be  absent)  the  object  of  not  unlike  praises Nor  blame 

it  in  those  years  to  propose  to  themselves  such  a  reward  as  the 
noblest  dispositions  above  other  things  in  this  life  have  some- 
times preferred.  Whereof  not  to  be  sensible  when  good  and 
fair  in  one  person  meet,  argues  both  a  gross  and  shallow  judg- 
ment, and  withal  an  ungentle  and  swainish  breast.  For  by  the 
firm  settling  of  these  persuasions  I  became  so  much  a  proficient, 
that  if  I  found  those  authors  anywhere  speaking  unworthy 
things  of  themselves,  or  unchaste  of  those  names  which  before 
they  had  extolled,  this  effect  it  wrought  with  me,  from  that 
time  forward  their  art  I  still  applauded,  but  the  men  I  deplored  ; 
and  above  them  all  preferred  the  two  famous  renowners  of  Beatrice 
and  Laura,  who  never  write  but  honour  of  them  to  whom  they 
devote  their  verse,  displaying  sublime  and  pure  thoughts  with- 
out transgression.  And  long  it  was  not  after,  when  I  was 
confirmed  in  this  opinion,  that  he,  who  would  not  be  frustrate 


78  SECOND  PERIOD.    1610— 1G60.  [chap. 

of  his  hope  to  write  well  hereafter  in  laudable  things,  ought 
himself  to  be  a  true  poem,  that  is  a  composition  and  pattern  of 
the  best  and  honourablest  things,  not  presuming  to  sing  high 
praises  of  heroic  men  or  famous  cities,  unless  he  have  in  him- 
self the  experience  and  the  practice  of  all  that  which  is  praise- 
worthy. 

"  These  reasonings  together  with  a  certain  niceness  of  nature, 
an  honest  haughtiness  and  self-esteem,  either  of  what  I  was  or 
what  I  might  be,  which  let  envy  call  pride,  and  lastly  that 
modesty,  whereof,  though  not  in  the  title-page,  yet  here,  I  may 
be  excused  to  make  some  beseeming  profession,  all  these  uniting 
the  supply  of  their  natural  aid  together,  kept  me  still  above 
those  low  descents  of  mind,  beneath  which  he  must  deject  and 
plunge  himself,  that  can  agree  to  saleable  and  unlawful  pros- 
titutions. 

"  Next,  for  hear  me  out  now,  readers,  that  I  may  tell  ye 
whither  my  younger  feet  wandered,  I  betook  me  among  those 
lofty  fables  and  romances  which  recount  in  solemn  cantos  the 
deeds  of  knighthood  founded  by  our  victorious  kings,  and  from 
hence  had  in  renown  over  all  Christendom.  There  I  read  it  in 
the  oath  of  every  knight,  that  he  should  defend  to  the  expence 
of  his  best  blood,  or  of  his  life  if  it  so  befel  him,  the  honour  aud 
chastity  of  virgin  or  matron.  From  whence  even  then  I  learnt 
what  a  noble  virtue  chastity  ever  must  be,  to  the  defence  of 
which  so  many  worthies  by  such  a  dear  adventure  of  themselves 
had  sworn.  And  if  I  found  in  the  story  afterwards  any  of  them 
by  word  or  deed  breaking  that  oath,  I  judged  it  the  same  fault 
of  the  poet  as  that  which  is  attributed  to  Homer  to  have  written 
undecent  things  of  the  gods.  Only  this  my  mind  gave  me,  that 
every  free  and  gentle  spirit  without  that  oath  ought  to  be 
borne  a  knight,  nor  needed  to  expect  the  gilt  spur,  or  the  laying 
of  a  sword  upon  his  shoulder,  to  stir  him  up  both  by  his  counsel 
and  his  arm  to  serve  and  protect  the  weakness  of  any  attempted 
chastity.  So  that  even  those  books  which  to  many  others  have 
been  the  fuel  of  wantonness  and  loose  living,  I  cannot  think  how 
unless  by  divine  indulgence,  proved  to  me  so  many  incitements 
to  the  love  and  steadfast  observation  of  virtue." 

This  is  one  of  the  autobiographical  oases  in  these  pam- 


vi.]  PAMPHLETS.  79 

phlets,  which  are  otherwise  arid  deserts  of  sand,  scorched 
hy  the  fire  of  extinct  passion.     It  may  he  asked  why  it  is 
that  a  few  men,  Gihbon  or  Milton,  are  indulged  without 
challenge   in   talk   ahout   themselves,    which   would    he 
childish  vanity  or  odious   egotism  in  others.      When  a 
Frenchman  writes,  "  Nous  avons  tons,  nous  autres  Fran- 
cais,  des  seduisantes  qualites  "  (Gaffarel),  he  is  ridiculous- 
The  difference  is  not  merely  that  we  tolerate  in  a  man  of 
confessed  superiority  what   would    he   intolerable  in  an 
equal.     This  is  true  ;  hut  there  is  a  further  distinction  of 
moral  quality  in  men's  confessions.      In  Milton,    as  in 
Gihbon,  the  gratification  of  self-love,  which  attends  all 
autobiography,    is   felt   to   he   subordinated  to  a  nohler 
intention.     The    lofty  conception  which  Milton   formed 
of  his  vocation  as  a  poet,  expands  his  soul  and  absorbs  his 
personality.     It  is  his  office,  and  not  himself,  which  lie 
magnifies.     The  details  of  his  life  and  nurture  are  im- 
portant, not  because  they  belong  to  him,  but  because  he 
belongs,  by  dedication,  to  a  high  and  sacred  caUing.     He 
is  extremely  jealous,  not  of  his  own  reputation,  but  of  the 
credit  which  is  due  to  lofty  endeavour.     "We  have  only  to 
compare  Milton's  magnanimous  assumption   of  the  first 
place  with  the  paltry  conceit  with  which,  in  the  following 
age  of  Dryden  and  Pope,  men   spoke  of  themselves  as 
authors,  to  see  the  wide  difference  between  the  profes- 
sional vanity  of  successful  authorship  and  the  proud  con- 
sciousness  of    a    prophetic    mission.      Milton    leads    a 
dedicated  life,   and  has  laid   down  for  himself  the  law 
that  "  he  who  would  not  be  frustrate  of  his  hope  to  write 
well  hereafter  in  laudable  things,  ought  himself  to  be  a 
true  poem." 

If  Milton  had  not  been  the  author  of  Lycidas   and 
Paradise  Lost,  his  political  pamphlets  would  have  been 


80  SECOND  PERIOD.    1640— 16G0.  [chap. 

as  forgotten  as  are  the  thousand  civil  war  tracts  preserved 
in  the  Thomason  collection  in  the  Museum,  or  have 
served,  at  most,  as  philological  landmarks.  One,  how- 
ever, of  his  prose  tracts  has  continued  to  enjoy  some 
degree  of  credit  down  to  the  present  time,  for  its  matter 
as  well  as  for  its  words,  Areopagitica.  This  tract  helongs 
to  the  year  1644,  the  most  fertile  year  in  Milton's  life,  as 
in  it  he  brought  out  two  of  his  divorce  tracts,  the 
Tractate  of  Education,  and  the  Areopagitica.  As  Milton's 
moving  principle  was  not  any  preconceived  system  of 
doctrine  but  the  passion  for  liberty  in  general,  it  was 
natural  that  he  should  plead,  when  occasion  called,  for 
liberty  of  the  press,  among  others.  The  occasion  was  one 
personal  to  himself. 

It  is  well  known  that,  early  in  the  history  of  printing, 
governments  became  jealous  of  this  new  instrument  for 
influencing  opinion.  In  England,  in  1556,  under  Mary, 
the  Stationers'  Company  was  invested  with  legal  privileges, 
having  the  twofold  object  of  protecting  the  book  trade  and 
controlling  writers.  All  publications  were  required  to 
be  registered  in  the  register  of  the  company.  No  per- 
sons could  set  up  a  press  without  a  licence,  or  print 
anything  which  had  not  been  previously  approved  by 
some  official  censor.  The  court,  which  had  come  to  be 
known  as  the  court  of  Star-chamber,  exercised  criminal 
jurisdiction  over  offenders,  and  even  issued  its  own 
decrees  for  the  regulation  of  printing.  The  arbitrary 
action  of  this  court  had  no  small  share  in  bringing  about 
the  resistance  to  Charles  I.  But  the  fall  of  the  royal 
authority  did  not  mean  the  emancipation  of  the  press. 
The  Parliament  had  no  intention  of  letting  go  the  control 
which  the  monarchy  had  exercised ;  the  incidence  of  the 
coercion  Avas  to  be  shifted  from  themselves  upon  their 


vr.]  PAMPHLETS.  81 

opponents.  The  Star-chamber  was  abolished,  but  its 
powers  of  search  and  seizure  were  transferred  to  the  Com- 
pany of  Stationers.  Licensing  was  to  go  on  as  before,  but 
to  be  exercised  by  special  commissioners,  instead  of  by  the 
Archbishop  and  the  Bishop  of  London.  Only  whereas, 
before,  contraband  had  consisted  of  Presbyterian  books, 
henceforward  it  was  Catholic  and  Anglican  books  which 
would  be  suppressed. 

Such  was  not  Milton's  idea  of  the  liberty  of  thought 
and  speech  in  a  free  commonwealth.  He  had  himself 
written  for  the  Presbyterians  four  unlicensed  pamphlets. 
It  was  now  open  to  him  to  write  any  number,  and  to  get 
them  licensed,  provided  they  were  written  on  the  same 
side.  This  was  not  liberty,  as  he  had  learned  it  in  his 
classics,  "ubi  sentire  quae  velis,  et  quae  sentias  dicere 
licet."  Over  and  above  this  encroachment  on  the  liberty 
of  the  free  citizen,  it  so  happened  that  at  this  moment 
Milton  himself  was  concerned  to  ventilate  an  opinion 
which  was  not  Presbyterian,  and  had  no  chance  of  passing 
a  Presbyterian  licenser.  His  Doctrine  and  Discipline  of 
Divorce  was  just  ready  for  press  when  the  ordinance  of 
1643  came  into  operation.  He  published  it  without 
licence  and  without  printer's  name,  in  defiance  of  the  law, 
and  awaited  the  consequences.  There  were  no  conse- 
quences. He  repeated  the  offence  in  a  second  edition  in 
February,  1644,  putting  his  name  now  (the  first  edition 
had  been  anonymous),  and  dedicating  it  to  the  very  Par- 
liament whose  ordinance  he  was  setting  at  nought.  This 
time  the  Commons,  stirred  up  by  a  petition  from  the 
Company  of  Stationers,  referred  the  matter  to  the  com- 
mittee of  printing.  It  went  no  further.  Either  it  was 
deemed  inexpedient  to  molest  so  sound  a  Parliamentarian 
as  Milton,  or  Cromwell's  "accommodation  resolution"  of 

G 


82  SECOND  PERIOD.    1610—1660.  [chap. 

September  13,  1644,  opened  the  eyes  of  the  Presbyterian 
zealots  to  the  existence  in  the  kingdom  of  a  new,  and 
much  wider,  phase  of  opinion,  which  ominously  threat- 
ened the  compact  little  edifice  of  Presbyterian  truth  that 
they  had  been  erecting  with  a  profound  conviction  of  its 
exclusive  orthodoxy. 

The  occurrence  had  been  sufficient  to  give  a  new  direc- 
tion to  Milton's  thoughts.  Eegardless  of  the  fact  that  his 
plea  for  liberty  in  marriage  had  fallen  upon  deaf  ears,  he 
would  plead  for  liberty  of  speech.  The  Areopagitica,  for 
the  Liberty  of  unlicensed  Printing,  came  out  in  November, 
1644,  an  unlicensed,  unregistered  publication,  without 
printer's  or  bookseller's  name.  It  was  cast  in  the  form  of 
a  speech  addressed  to  the  Parliament.  The  motto  was 
taken  from  Euripides,  and  printed  in  the  original  Greek, 
which  was  not,  when  addressed  to  the  Parliament  of 
1644,  the  absurdity  which  it  would  be  now.  The  title  is 
less  appropriate,  being  borrowed  from  the  Areopagitic 
Discourse  of  Isocrates,  between  which  and  Milton's 
Speech  there  is  no  resemblance  either  in  subject  or  style. 
All  that  the  two  productions  have  in  common  is  their  form. 
They  are  both  unspoken  orations,  written  to  the  address 
of  a  representative  assembly — the  one  to  the  Boule  or 
Senate  of  Athens,  the  other  to  the  Parliament  of  England. 

Milton's  Speech  is  in  his  own  best  style;  a  copious 
flood  of  majestic  eloquence,  the  outpouring  of  a  noble 
soul  with  a  divine  scorn  of  narrow  dogma  and  paltry 
aims.  But  it  is  a  mere  pamphlet,  extemporised  in,  at 
most,  a  month  or  two,  without  research  or  special  know- 
ledge, with  no  attempt  to  ascertain  general  principles,  and 
more  than  Milton's  usual  disregard  of  method.  A  jurist's 
question  is  hero  handled  by  a  rhetorician.  He  has 
preached  a  noble  and  heartrstirring  sermon  on  his  text, 


vi.]  AREOPAGITICA.  S3 

but  the  problem  for  the  legislator  remains  where  it  was. 
The  vagueness  and  confusion  of  the  thoughts  finds  a 
vehicle  in  language  which  is  too  often  overcrowded  and 
obscure.  I  think  the  Areopagitica  has  few  or  no 
offences  against  taste ;  on  the  other  hand,  it  has  few  or 
none  of  those  grand  passages  which  redeem  the  scurrility 
of  his  political  pamphlets.  The  passage  in  which  Milton's 
visit  to  Galileo  "  grown  old,  a  prisoner  to  the  Inquisition," 
is  mentioned,  is  often  quoted  for  its  biographical  interest ; 
and  the  terse  dictum,  "  as  good  almost  kill  a  man  as  kill  a 
good  book,"  has  passed  into  a  current  axiom.  A  paragraph 
at  the  close,  where  he  hints  that  the  time  may  be  come 
to  suppress  the  suppressors,  intimates,  but  so  obscurely 
as  to  be  likely  to  escape  notice,  that  Milton  had  already 
made  up  his  mind  that  a  struggle  with  the  Presbyterian 
party  was  to  be  the  sequel  of  the  overthrow  of  the 
Royalists.  He  has  not  yet  arrived  at  the  point  he  will 
hereafter  reach,  of  rejecting  the  very  idea  of  a  minister 
of  religion,  but  he  is  already  aggrieved  by  the  implicit 
faith  which  the  Puritan  laity,  who  had  cast  out  bishops, 
were  beginning  to  bestow  upon  their  pastor ;  "  a  factor  to 
whose  care  and  credit  he  may  commit  the  whole  managing 
of  his  religious  affairs."  Finally,  it  must  be  noted,  that 
Milton,  though  he  had  come  to  see  round  Presbyterianism, 
had  not,  in  1644,  shaken  off  all  dogmatic  profession.  His 
toleration  of  opinion  was  far  from  complete.  He  would 
call  in  the  intervention  of  the  executioner  in  the  case  of 
"  mischievous  and  libellous  books,"  and  could  not  bring 
himself  to  contemplate  the  toleration  of  Popery  and  open 
superstition,  "  which  as  it  extirpates  all  religious  and  civil 
supremacies,  so  itself  should  be  extirpate  ;  provided  first 
that  all  charitable  and  compassionate  means  be  used  to 
win  and  gain  the  weak  and  misled." 

G  2 


81  SECOND  PERIOD.     1610—1660.  [en.  vt. 

The  Areopagitica,  as  might  he  expected,  produced  no 

effect  upon  the  legislation  of  the  Long  Parliament,  of  whom 

(says  Hallam)    "very  few   acts   of  political   wisdom   or 

courage  are  recorded."     Individual  licensers  "became  more 

lax  in  the  performance  of  the  duty,  hut  this  is  reasonably 

to  he  ascribed  to  the  growing  spirit  of  independency — a 

spirit  which  was  incompatible  with  any  emhargo  on  the 

utterance  of  private  opinion.     A  curious  epilogue  to  the 

history  of  this  puhlication  is  the  fact,  first  brought  to  light 

by  Mr.  Masson,  that  the  author  of  the  Areopagitica,  at  a 

later  time,  acted  himself  in  the  capacity  of  licenser.     It 

was   in    1651,    under    the    Commonwealth,    Marchmont 

Needham  being  editor  of  the  weekly  paper  called  Mer- 

curius  Politicus,  that  Milton  was  associated  with  him  as  his 

censor  or  supervising  editor.      Mr.  Masson  conjectures, 

with  some  probability,  that  the  leading  articles  of  the 

Mercurius,  during  part  of  the  year  1651,  received  touches 

from  Milton's  hand.     But  this  was,  after  all,  rather  in 

the  character  of  editor,  whose  business  it  is  to  see  that 

nothing  improper  goes  into  the  paper,  than  in  that  of 

press  licenser  in  the  sense  in  which  the  Areopagitica  had 

denounced  it. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

BIOGRAPHICAL.       1640 1649. 

In  September,  1645,  Milton  left  tbe  garden-bouse  in 
Aldersgate,  for  a  larger  bouse  in  Barbican,  in  tbe 
same  neighbourhood,  but  a  little  further  from  the  city 
gate,  i.  e.  more  in  tbe  country.  The  larger  house  was, 
perhaps,  required  for  tbe  accommodation  of  his  pupils 
(see  above,  p.  44),  but  it  served  to  shelter  his  wife's 
family,  when  they  were  thrown  upon  the  world  by  the 
surrender  of  Oxford  in  June,  1646.  In  this  Barbican 
house  Mr.  Powell  died  at  the  end  of  that  year.  Milton 
had  been  promised  with  his  wife  a  portion  of  1000Z.;  but 
Mr.  Powell's  affairs  had  long  been  in  a  very  embarrassed 
condition,  and  now  by  the  consequences  of  delinquency 
that  condition  had  become  one  of  absolute  ruin.  Great 
pains  have  been  bestowed  by  Mr.  Masson  in  unravelling 
the  entanglement  of  the  Powell  accounts.  The  data  which 
remain  are  ample,  and  we  cannot  but  feel  astonished  at  the 
accuracy  with  which  our  national  records,  in  more  im- 
portant matters  so  defective,  enable  us  to  set  out  a  debtor 
and  creditor  balance  of  the  estate  of  a  private  citizen,  who 
died  more  than  200  years  ago.  But  the  circumstances  are 
peculiarly  intricate,  and  we  are  still  unable  to  reconcile 


86  SECOND  PERIOD.     1640—1660.  [chap. 

Mr.  Powell's  will  with  the  composition  records,  "both  of 
wliich  are  extant.  As  a  compounding  delinquent,  his  fine, 
assessed  at  the  customary  rate  of  two  years'  income,  was 
fixed  by  the  commissioners  at  1807.  The  commissioners 
must  have,  therefore,  been  satisfied  that  his  income  did 
not  exceed  907.  a  year.  Yet  by  his  will  of  date  December 
30,  1646,  he  leaves  his  estate  of  Forest  Hill,  the  annual 
value  of  which  alone  far  exceeded  907.,  to  his  eldest  son. 
This  property  is  not  mentioned  in  the  inventory  of  his 
estate,  real  and  personal,  laid  before  the  commissioners, 
sworn  to  by  the  delinquent,  and  by  them  accepted.  The 
possible  explanation  is  that  the  Forest  Hill  property  had 
really  passed  into  the  possession,  by  foreclosure,  of  the 
mortgagee,  Sir  Eobert  Pye,  who  sate  for  Woodstock  in 
the  Long  Parliament,  but  that  Mr.  Powell,  making  his 
Avill  on  his  deathbed,  pleased  himself  with  the  fancy  of 
leaving  his  son  and  heir  an  estate  which  was  no  longer 
his  to  dispose  of.  Putting  Porest  Hill  out  of  the  account, 
it  would  appear  that  the  sequestrators  had  dealt  somewhat 
harshly  with  Mr.  Powell ;  for  they  had  included  in  their 
estimate  one  doubtful  asset  of  500/.,  and  one  non-existent 
of  4007.  This  last  item  was  a  stock  of  timber  stated  to 
be  at  Forest  Hill,  but  which  had  really  been  appropriated 
without  payment  by  the  Parliamentarians,  and  part  of 
it  voted  by  Parliament  itself  towards  repair  of  the  church 
in  the  staunch  Puritan  town  of  Banbury. 

The  upshot  of  the  whole  transaction  is  that,  in  satisfac- 
tion of  his  claim  of  1500Z.  (10007.  his  wife's  dower,  5007. 
an  old  loan  of  1627),  Milton  came  into  possession  of  some 
property  at  Wheatley.  This  property,  consisting  of  the 
tithes  of  Wheatley,  certain  cottages,  and  three  and  a  half 
yard  lands,  had  in  the  time  of  the  disturbances  pro- 
duced only  407.  a  year.     But  as  the  value  of  all  property 


vii.]  DOMESTIC  INCIDENTS.  87 

improved  when  the  civil  war  came  to  an  end,  Milton 
found  the  whole  could  now  be  let  for  80Z.  But  then  out 
of  this  he  had  to  pay  Mr.  Powell's  composition,  reduced 
to  130/.  on  Milton's  petition,  and  the  widow's  jointure, 
computed  at  261.  13s.  id.  per  annum.  What  of  income 
remained  after  these  disbursements  he  might  apply 
towards  repaying-  himself  the  old  loan  of  1627.  This  was 
all  Milton  ever  saw  of  the  1000/.  which  Mr.  Powell,  with 
the  high-flying  magnificence  of  a  cavalier  who  knew  he 
was  ruined,  had  promised  as  his  daughter's  portion. 

Mr.  Powell's  death  was  followed  in  less  than  three 
months  by  that  of  John  Milton,  senior.  He  died  in  the 
house  in  Barbican,  and  the  entry,  "John  Milton,  gentle- 
man, 15  (March),"  among  the  burials  in  164-6,  is  still  to  bo 
seen  in  the  register  of  the  parish  of  St.  Giles's,  Cripplegate. 
A  host  of  eminent  men  have  traced  the  first  impulse  of 
their  genius  to  their  mother.  Milton  always  acknowledged 
with  just  gratitude  that  it  was  to  his  father's  discerning  taste 
and  fostering  care,  that  he  owed  the  encouragement  of  his 
studies,  and  the  leisure  which  rendered  them  possible. 
He  has  registered  this  gratitude  in  both  prose  and  verse. 
The  Latin  hexameters,  "  Ad  patrem,"  written  at  Horton, 
are  inspired  by  a  feeling  far  beyond  commonplace  filial 
piety,  and  a  warmth  which  is  rare  indeed  in  neo-Latin 
versification.  And  when,  in  his  prose  pamphlets,  he  has 
occasion  to  speak  of  himself,  he  does  not  omit  the  acknow- 
ledgment of  "  the  ceaseless  diligence  and  care  of  my  father, 
whom  God  recompense."     (Reason  of  Church  Government.) 

After  the  death  of  his  father,  being  now  more  at  ease 
in  his  circumstances,  he  gave  up  taking  pupils,  and 
quitted  the  large  house  in  Barbican  for  a  smaller  in  High 
Holborn,  opening  backwards  into  Lincoln's-Inn-Pields. 
This  removal  was  about  Michaelmas,  16  47. 


88  SECOND  PERIOD.    1640—1660.  [chap. 

During  this  period,  1639 — 1649,  while  his  interests  were 
engaged  by  the  all-absorbing  events  of  the  civil  strife,  he 
wrote  no  poetry,  or  none  deserving  the  name.  All  artists 
have  intervals  of  non-productiveness,  usually  caused  by 
exhaustion.  This  was  not  Milton's  case.  His  genius 
was  not  his  master,  nor  could  it  pass,  like  that  of 
Leonardo  da  Yinci,  unmoved  through  the  most  tragic 
scenes.  He  deliberately  suspended  it  at  the  call  of  what  he 
believed  to  be  duty  to  his  country.  His  unrivalled  power 
of  expression  was  placed  at  the  service  of  a  passionate 
political  conviction.  This  prostitution  of  faculty  avenged 
itself;  for  when  he  did  turn  to  poetry,  his  strength  was 
gone  from  him.  The  period  is  chiefly  marked  by  sonnets, 
not  many,  one  in  a  year,  or  thereabouts.  That  On  the 
religious  memory  of  Mrs.  Catherine  Thomson,  in  1646,  is 
the  lowest  point  touched  by  Milton  in  poetry,  for  his 
metrical  psalms  do  not  deserve  the  name. 

The  sonnet,  or  Elegy  on  Mrs.  Catherine  Thomson  in 
the  form  of  a  sonnet,  though  in  poetical  merit  not  distin- 
guishable from  the  average  religious  verse  of  the  Caroline 
age,  has  an  interest  for  the  biographer.  It  breathes 
a  holy  calm  that  is  in  sharp  contrast  with  the  angry 
virulence  of  the  pamphlets,  which  were  being  written  at 
this  very  time  by  the  same  pen.  Amid  his  intemperate 
denunciations  of  his  political  and  ecclesiastical  foes,  it 
seems  that  Milton  did  not  inwardly  forfeit  the  peace  which 
passeth  all  understanding.  He  had  formerly  said  himself 
(Doctrine  and  Disc.),  "  nothing  more  than  disturbance  of 
mind  suspends  us  from  approaching  to  God."  Now,  out 
of  all  the  clamour  and  the  bitterness  of  the  battle  of 
the  sects,  he  can  retire  and  be  alone  with  his  heavenly 
aspirations,  which  have  lost  none  of  their  ardour  by 
having  laid  aside  all  their  sectarianism.  Hie  genius  has 
forsaken  him,  but  his  soul  still  glows  with  the  fervour  of 


vii.]  SONNETS.  89 

devotion.  And  even  of  this  sonnet  we  may  say  what 
Ellis  says  of  Catullus,  that  Milton  never  ceases  to  be  a 
poet,  even  when  his  words  are  most  prosaic. 

The  sonnet  (xv.)  On  the  Lord- General  Fairfax,  at  the 
siege  of  Colchester,  written  in  1648,  is  again  a  manifesto 
of  the  writer's  political  feelings,  nobly  uttered,  and  invest- 
ing party  with  a  patriotic  dignity  not  unworthy  of  the 
man,  Milton.  It  is  a  hortatory  lyric,  a  trumpet-call  to  his 
party  in  the  moment  of  victory  to  remember  the  duties 
which  that  victory  imposed  upon  them.  It  is  not  with- 
out the  splendid  resonance  of  the  Italian  canzone.  But 
it  can  scarcely  be  called  poetry,  expressing,  as  it  does, 
facts  directly,  and  not  indirectly  through  their  imaginative 
equivalents.  Fairfax  was,  doubtless,  well  worthy  that 
Milton  should  have  commemorated  him  in  a  higher  strain. 
Of  Fairfax's  eminent  qualities  the  sonnet  only  dwells  on 
two,  his  personal  valour,  which  had  been  tried  in  many 
fights — he  had  been  three  times  dangerously  wounded  in 
the  Yorkshire  campaign — and  his  superiority  to  sordid 
interests.  Of  his  generalship,  in  which  he  was  second  to 
Cromwell  only,  and  of  his  love  of  arts  and  learning, 
nothing  is  said,  though  the  last  was  the  passion  of  his 
life,  for  which  at  forty  he  renounced  ambition.  Perhaps 
in  1648  Milton,  who  lived  a  very  retired  life,  did  not 
know  of  these  tastes,  and  had  not  heard  that  it  was  by 
Fairfax's  care  that  the  Bodleian  library  was  saved  from 
wreck  on  the  surrender  of  Oxford  in  1646.  And  it  was 
not  till  later,  years  after  the  sonnet  was  written,  that  the 
same  Fairfax,  "  whose  name  in  arms  through  Europe 
rings,"  became  a  competitor  of  Milton  in  the  attempt  to 
paraphrase  the  Psalms  in  metre. 

Milton's  paraphrase  of  the  Psalms  belongs  to  history, 
but  to  the  history  of  psalmody,  not  that  of  poetry.  At  St. 
Paul's  School,  at  fifteen,  the  boy  had  turned  two  psalms, 


90  SECOND  PEEIOD.    1640—1660.  [chap. 

the  114th  and  the  13Gth,  hy  way  of  exercise.  That  in 
his  day  of  plenary  inspiration,  Milton,  who  disdained 
Dryden  as  "  a  rhymist  hut  no  poet,"  and  has  recorded  his 
own  impatience  with  the  "  drawling  versifiers,"  should 
have  undertaken  to  grind  down  the  noble  antistrophic 
lyrics  of  the  Hebrew  bard  into  ballad  rhymes  for  the  use 
of  Puritan  worship,  would  have  been  impossible.  But  the 
idea  of  being  useful  to  his  country  had  acquired  exclusive 
possession  of  his  mind.  Even  his  faculty  of  verse  should 
be  employed  in  the  good  cause.  If  Parliament  had  set  him 
the  task,  doubtless  he  would  have  willingly  undertaken  it, 
as  Corneille,  in  the  blindness  of  Catholic  obedience,  versified 
the  Imitatio  Cltristi  at  the  command  of  the  Jesuits. 
Milton  was  not  officially  employed,  but  voluntarily  took 
up  the  work.  The  Puritans  were  bent  upon  substituting 
a  new  version  of  the  Davidic  Psalms  for  that  of  Sternhold 
and  Hopkins,  for  no  other  reason  than  that  the  latter 
formed  part  of  the  hated  Book  of  Common  Prayer.  The 
Commons  had  pronounced  in  favour  of  a  version  by  one  of 
their  own  members,  the  staunch  Puritan  M.P.  for  Truro, 
Francis  Eouse.  The  Lords  favoured  a  rival  book,  and 
numerous  other  claimants  were  before  the  public.  Dis- 
satisfied with  any  of  these  attempts,  Milton  would  essay 
himself.  In  16-18  he  turned  nine  psalms,  and  recurring  to 
the  task  in  1G53,  "  did  into  verse  "  eight  more.  He  thought 
these  specimens  worth  preserving,  and  annexing  to  the 
volume  of  his  poems  which  he  published  himself  in  1673. 
As  this  doggerel  continues  to  encumber  each  succeeding 
edition  of  the  Poetical  Works,  it  is  as  well  that  Milton  did 
not  persevere  with  his  experiment  and  produce  a  complete 
Psalter.  He  prudently  abandoned  a  task  in  which  success 
is  impossible.  A  metrical  psalm,  being  a  compromise 
between   the   psalm  and  the  hymn,  like  other    compro- 


vii.]  COLLECTION  OP  EARLY  POEMS.  91 

inises,  misses,  rather  than  combines,  the  distinctive  ex- 
cellences of  the  things  united.  That  Milton  should  ever 
have  attempted  what  poetry  forbids,  is  only  another  proof 
how  entirely  at  this  period  more  absorbing  motives  had 
possession  of  his  mind,  and  overbore  his  poetical  judgment. 
It  is  a  coincidence  worth  remembering  that  Milton's  con- 
temporary, Lord  Clarendon,  was  at  this  very  time  solacing 
his  exile  at  Madrid  by  composing,  not  a  version  but  a  com- 
mentary upon  the  Psalms,  "  applying  those  devotions  to 
the  troubles  of  this  time." 

Yet  all  the  while  that  he  was  thus  unfaithful  in  prac- 
tice to  his  art,  it  was  poetry  that  possessed  his  real  affec- 
tions, and  the  reputation  of  a  poet  which  formed  his 
ambition.  It  was  a  temporary  separation,  and  not  a 
divorce,  which  he  designed.  In  each  successive  pamphlet 
he  reiterates  his  undertaking  to  redeem  his  pledge  of  a 
great  work,  as  soon  as  liberty  shall  be  consolidated  in  the 
realm.  Meanwhile,  as  an  earnest  of  what  should  be  here- 
after, he  permitted  the  publication  of  a  collection  of  his 
early  poems. 

This  little  volume  of  some  200  pages,  rude  in  execution 
as  it  is,  ranks  among  the  highest  prizes  of  the  book  col- 
lector, very  few  copies  being  extant,  and  those  mostly  in 
public  libraries.  It  appeared  in  1645,  and  owed  its 
appearance,  not  to  the  vanity  of  the  author,  but  to  the 
zeal  of  a  publisher.  Humphrey  Moseley,  at  the  sign  of 
the  Prince's  Arms,  in  St.  Paul's  Churchyard,  suggested 
the  collection  to  Milton,  and  undertook  the  risk  of  it, 
though  knowing,  as  he  says  in  the  prefixed  address  of 
The  Stationer  to  the  Eeader,  that  "  the  slightest  pam- 
phlet is  nowadays  more  vendible  than  the  works  of 
learnedest  men."  It  may  create  some  surprise  that,  in 
10  45,  there  should  have  been  any  public  in  England  for 


92  SECOND  PERIOD.     1610—1660.  [en.  vn. 

a  volume  of  verse.  Naseby  had  been  fought  in  June, 
Philiphaugh  in  September,  Fairfax  and  Cromwell  were 
continuing  their  victorious  career  in  the  west,  Chester, 
Worcester,  and  the  stronghold  of  Oxford,  alone  holding 
out  for  the  King.  It  was  clear  that  the  conflict  was 
decided  in  favour  of  the  Parliament,  but  men's  minds 
must  have  been  strung  to  a  pitch  of  intense  expectation 
as  to  what  kind  of  settlement  was  to  come.  Yet,  at  the 
very  crisis  of  the  civil  strife,  we  find  a  London  publisher 
able  to  bring  out  the  Poems  of  Waller  (1644),  and  suffi- 
ciently encouraged  by  their  reception  to  follow  them  up, 
in  the  next  year,  with  the  Poems  of  Mr.  John  Milton. 
Are  we  warranted  in  inferring  that  a  finer  public  was 
beginning  to  loathe  the  dreary  theological  polemic  of 
which  it  had  had  a  surfeit,  and  turned  to  a  book  of  poetry 
as  that  which  was  most  unlike  the  daily  garbage,  just  as 
a  later  public  absorbed  five  thousand  copies  of  Scott's 
Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel  in  the  year  of  Austerlitz  1  One 
would  like  to  know  who  were  the  purchasers  of  Milton 
and  Waller,  when  the  cavalier  families  were  being  ruined 
by  confiscations  and  compositions,  and  Puritan  families 
would  turn  with  pious  horror  from  the  very  name  of  a 
Mask. 

Milton  was  himself  editor  of  his  own  volume,  and  pre- 
fixed to  it,  again  out  of  Virgil's  Eclogues,  the  charac- 
teristic motto,  "  Baccare  frontem  Cingite,  ne  vati  noceat 
main  lingua  fiduro,"  indicating  that  his  poetry  was  all  to 
come. 


CHAPTEE  VIII. 


THE  LATIN  SECRETARYSHIP. 


The  Crown  having  fallen  on  January  30,  1649,  and  the 
House  of  Lords  by  the  vote  of  February  6  following, 
the  sovereign  power  in  England  was  for  the  moment  in 
the  hands  of  that  fragment  of  the  Long  Parliament,  which 
remained  after  the  various  purges  and  expulsions  to  which 
it  had  been  subjected.  Some  of  the  excluded  members 
were  allowed  to  return,  and  by  occasional  new  elections 
in  safe  boroughs  the  number  of  members  was  raised  to 
one  hundred  and  fifty,  securing  an  average  attendance  of 
about  seventy.  The  future  government  of  the  nation  was 
declared  to  be  by  way  of  a  republic,  and  the  writs  ran 
in  the  name  of  the  Keepers  of  the  Liberty  of  England, 
by  authority  of  Parliament.  But  the  real  centre  of 
power  was  the  Council  of  State,  a  body  of  forty-one 
members,  nominated  for  a  period  of  twelve  months,  ac- 
cording to  a  plan  of  constitution  devised  by  the  army 
leaders.  In  the  hands  of  this  republican  Council  was 
concentrated  a  combination  of  power  such  as  had  never 
been  wielded  by  any  English  monarch.  But,  though  its 
attribution  of  authority  was  great,  its  exercise  of  the 
powers  lodged  with  it  was  hampered  by  differences  among 


94>  SECOND  PERIOD.    1640 -16G0.  [chap. 

its  members,  and  the  disaffection  of  various  interests  and 
parties.  The  Council  of  State  contained  most  of  the 
notable  statesmen  of  the  Parliamentary  party,  and  had 
before  it  a  vast  task  in  reorganizing  the  administration  of 
England,  in  the  conduct  of  an  actual  war  in  Ireland,  a  pos- 
sible war  in  Scotland,  and  in  the  maintenance  of  the  honour 
of  the  republic  in  its  relations  with  foreign  princes. 

The  Council  of  State  prepared  the  business  for  its  con- 
sideration through  special  committees  for  special  depart- 
ments of  the  public  service.  The  Committee  for  Foreign 
Affairs  consisted  of  "Whitelocke,  Vane,  Lord  Lisle,  Lord 
Denbigh,  Mr.  Marten,  Mr.  Lisle.  A  secretary  was  re- 
quired to  translate  despatches,  both  those  which  were 
sent  out,  and  those  which  were  received.  Nothing  seems 
more  natural  than  that  the  author  of  the  Tenure  of  Kings 
and  Magistrates,  who  was  at  once  a  staunch  Parliamen- 
tarian, an  accomplished  Latin  scholar,  and  conversant 
with  more  than  one  of  the  spoken  languages  of  the  Con- 
tinent, sbould  be  thought  of  for  the  office.  Yet  so  little 
was  Milton  personally  known,  living  as  he  did  the  life  of 
a  retired  student,  that  it  was  the  accident  of  his  having 
the  acquaintance  of  one  of  the  new  Council  to  which  he 
owed  the  appointment. 

The  post  was  offered  him,  but  would  he  accept  it  ?  He 
had  never  ceased  to  revolve  in  his  mind  subjects  capable 
of  poetical  treatment,  and  to  cherish  his  own  vocation  as 
the  classical  poet  of  the  English  language.  Peace  had 
come,  and  leisure  was  within  his  reach.  He  was  poor, 
but  his  Avants  were  simple,  and  he  had  enough  wherewith 
to  meet  them.  Already,  in  1649,  unmistakable  symp- 
toms threatened  his  sight,  and  warned  him  of  the  necessity 
of  the  most  rigid  economy  in  the  use  of  the  eyes.  The 
duties  that   he  was  now   asked   to   undertake  were  in- 


vin.]  THE  LATIN  SECRETARYSHIP.  95 

definite  already  in  amount,  and  would  doubtless  extend 
themselves  if  zealously  discharged. 

But  the  temptation  was  strong,  and  he  did  not  resist  it. 
The  increase  of  income  was,  doubtless,  to  Milton  the 
smallest  among  the  inducements  now  offered  him.  He 
had  thought  it  a  sufficient  and  an  honourable  employment 
to  serve  his  country  with  his  pen  as  a  volunteer.  Here 
was  an  offer  to  become  her  official,  authorised  servant, 
and  to  bear  a  part,  though  a  humble  part,  in  the  great 
work  of  reorganisation  which  was  now  to  be  attempted. 
Above  all  other  allurements  to  a  retired  student,  unversed 
in  men,  and  ready  to  idealise  character,  was  the  oppor- 
tunity of  becoming  at  once  personally  acquainted  with  all 
the  great  men  of  the  patriotic  party,  whom  his  ardent 
imagination  had  invested  with  heroic  qualities.  The  very 
names  of  Fairfax,  Vane,  and  Cromwell,  called  up  in  him 
emotions  for  which  prose  was  an  inadequate  vehicle.  Nor 
was  it  only  that  in  the  Council  itself  he  would  be  in  daily 
intercourse  with  such  men  as  Henry  Marten,  Hutchinson, 
Whitelocke,  Harrington,  St.  John,  Ludlow,  but  his  posi- 
tion would  introduce  him  at  once  to  all  the  members  of 
the  House  who  Avere  worth  knowing.  It  was  not  merely 
a  new  world ;  it  was  the  world  which  was  here  opened 
for  the  first  time  to  Milton.  And  we  must  remember  that, 
all  scholar  as  he  was,  Milton  was  well  convinced  of  the 
truth  that  there  are  other  sources  of  knowledge  besides 
books.  He  had  himself  spent  "  many  studious  and  contem- 
plative years  in  the  search  of  religious  and  civil  knowledge," 
yet  he  knew  that,  for  a  mind  large  enough  to  "  take  in  a 
general  survey  of  humane  things,"  it  was  necessary  to  know — 

The  world,  .  .  .  her  glory, 

Empires  and  monarchs,  and  their  radiant  courts, 

Best  school  of  best  experience. 

P.  B.  iii.  237. 


90  SECOND  PERIOD.    1610—1660.  [chap. 

He  had  repeatedly,  as  if  excusing  his  political  interludes, 
renewed  his  pledge  to  devote  all  his  powers  to  poetry  as 
soon  as  they  should  he  fully  ripe.  To  complete  his  edu- 
cation as  a  poet,  he  wanted  initiation  into  affairs.  Here 
was  an  opening  far  heyond  any  he  had  ever  dreamed  of. 
The  sacrifice  of  time  and  precious  eyesight  which  he  was 
to  make  was  costly,  hut  it  was  not  pure  waste ;  it  would 
he  partly  returned  to  him  in  a  ripened  experience  in 
this 

Insight 
In  all  things  that  to  greatest  actions  lead. 

He  accepted  the  post  at  once  without  hesitation.  On 
March  13,  1649,  the  Committee  for  Foreign  Affairs  was 
directed  to  make  the  offer  to  him;  on  March  15,  he 
attended  at  Whitehall  to  be  admitted  to  office.  Well 
would  it  have  been  both  for  his  genius  and  his  fame  if 
he  had  declined  it.  His  genius  might  have  reverted  to 
its  proper  course,  while  he  was  in  the  flower  of  age,  with 
eyesight  still  available,  and  a  spirit  exalted  by  the  triumph 
of  the  good  cause.  His  fame  would  have  been  saved 
from  the  degrading  incidents  of  the  contention  with  Sal- 
masius  and  Morus,  and  from  being  tarnished  by  the 
obloquy  of  the  faction  which  he  fought,  and  which 
conquered  him.  No  man  can  with  impunity  insult  and 
trample  upon  his  fellow-man,  even  in  the  best  of  causes. 
Especially  if  he  be  an  artist,  he  makes  it  impossible  to 
obtain  equitable  appreciation  of  his  work. 

So  far  as  Milton  reckoned  upon  a  gain  in  experience 
from  his  secretaryship,  he  doubtless  reaped  it.  Such  a 
probation  could  not  be  passed  without  solidifying  the 
judgment,  and  correcting  its  tendency  to  error.  And  this 
school  of  affairs,  which  is  indispensable  for  the  historian, 


vni.]  THE  LATIN  SECRETARYSHIP.  97 

may  also  be  available  for  the  poet.  Yet  it  would  be 
difficult  to  point  in  Milton's  subsequent  poetry  to  any 
element  which  the  poet  can  be  thought  to  have  imbibed 
from  the  foreign  secretary.  Where,  as  in  Milton's  two 
epics  and  Samson  Agonistes,  the  personages  are  all 
supernatural  or  heroic,  there  is  no  room  for  the  employ- 
ment of  knowledge  of  the  world.  Had  Milton  written 
comedy,  like  Moliere,  he  might  have  said  with  Moliere 
after  he  had  been  introduced  at  court,  "  Je  n'ai  plus 
que  faire  d'etudier  Plaute  et  Terence ;  je  n'ai  qu'a 
etudier  le  monde." 

The  office  into  which  Milton  was  now  inducted  is 
called  in  the  Council  books  that  of  "  Secretary  for  foreign 
tongues."  Its  duties  were  chiefly  the  translation  of 
despatches  from,  and  to,  foreign  governments.  The 
degree  of  estimation  in  which  the  Latin  secretary  was 
held,  may  be  measured  by  the  amount  of  salary  assigned 
him  Tor  while  the  English  chief  Secretary  had  a  salary 
of  730/.  (=  2200Z.  of  our  day),  the  Latin  Secretary  was 
paid  only  288Z.  13s.  6d.  (=  900/.).  Tor  this,  not  very 
liberal  pay,  he  was  told  that  all  his  time  was  to  be  at  the 
disposal  of  the  government.  Lincoln's  Inn  Fields  was 
too  far  off  for  a  servant  of  the  Council  who  might  have 
to  attend  meetings  at  seven  in  the  morning.  He  accord- 
ingly migrated  to  Charing  Cross,  now  become  again 
Charing  without  the  cross,  this  work  of  art  having  been 
an  early  (1647)  victim  of  religious  barbarism.  In  No- 
vember he  was  accommodated  with  chambers  in  "White- 
hall. But  from  these  he  was  soon  ousted  by  claimants 
more  considerable  or  more  importunate,  and  in  1651  he 
removed  to  "  a  pretty  garden-house  "  in  Petty  France, 
in  Westminster,  next  door  to  the  Lord  Scudamoro's,  and 
opening  into  St.  James's  Park.     The  house  was  extant 

H 


98  SECOND  PERIOD.     1640—1660.  [chap. 

till  1877,  when  it  disappeared,  the  last  of  Milton'a  many 
London  residences.  It  had  long  ceased  to  look  into  St. 
James's  Park,  more  than  one  row  of  houses,  encroach- 
ments upon  the  public  park,  having  grown  up  "between. 
The  garden-house  had  hecome  a  mere  ordinary  street 
house  in  York-street,  only  distinguished  from  the 
squalid  houses  on  either  side  of  it  "by  a  tablet  affixed  by 
Bentkam,  inscribed  "  sacred  to  Milton,  prince  of  poets." 
Petty  France  lost  its  designation  in  the  French  Kevo- 
lution,  in  ohedience  to  the  childish  petulance  which 
ohliterates  the  name  of  any  one  who  may  displease  you 
at  the  moment,  and  "became  one  of  the  seventeen  York- 
streets  of  the  metropolis.  Soon  after  the  re-baptism  of 
the  street,  Milton's  house  was  occupied  by  "William 
Hazlitt,  who  rented  it  of  Bentham.  Milton  had  lived  in 
it  for  nine  years,  from  1651  till  a  few  weeks  before  the 
Restoration.  Its  nearness  to  Whitehall  where  the  Council 
sat,  was  less  a  convenience  than  a  necessity. 

For  Milton's  life  now  became  ODe  of  close  attention, 
and  busy  service.  As  Latin  secretary,  and  Weckherlin's 
successor,  indeed,  his  proper  duties  were  only  those  of  a 
clerk  or  translator.  But  his  aptitude  for  business  of  a 
lih'i'ary  kind  soon  drew  on  him  a  great  variety  of  employ- 
ment. The  demand  for  a  Latin  translation  of  a  despatch 
was  not  one  of  frequent  occurrence.  The  Letters  of 
the  Parliament,  and  of  Oliver  and  llichard,  Protectors, 
■which  are,  intrusively,  printed  among  Milton's  works,  are 
but  one  hundred  and  thirty-seven  in  all.  This  number  is 
spread  over  ten  years,  being  at  the  rate  of  about  fourteen 
per  year  ;  most  of  them  are  very  short.  For  the  purposes 
of  a  biography  of  Milton,  it  is  sufficient  to  observe,  that 
the  dignified  attitude  which  the  Commonwealth  took  up 
towards  foreign  powers  lost  none  of  its  elevation  in  being 


vin.]  THE  LATIN  SECRETARYSHIP.  99 

conveyed  in  Miltonic  Latin.  Whether  satisfaction  for 
the  murder  of  an  envoy  is  to  he  extorted  from  the  arro- 
gant court  of  Madrid,  or  an  apology  is  to  he  offered  to  a 
liumhle  count  of  Oldenhurg  for  delay  in  issuing  a  salva- 
guardia  which  had  heen  promised,  the  same  equable 
dignity  of  expression  is  maintained,  equally  remote  from 
crouching  before  the  strong,  and  hectoring  the  weak. 

His  translations  were  not  all  the  duties  of  the  new 
secretary.  He  must  often  serve  as  interpreter  at  audi- 
ences of  foreign  envoys.  He  must  superintend  the  semi- 
official organ,  the  Mercurins  Politicus.  He  must  ansAver 
the  manifesto  of  the  Presbyterians  of  Ireland.  The  Ob- 
servations on  the  peace  of  Kilkenny  are  Milton's  com- 
position, but  from  instructions.  By  the  peace  the  Irish 
had  obtained  home  rule  in  its  widest  extent,  release  from 
the  oath  of  supremacy,  and  the  right  to  tie  their  ploughs 
to  the  tail  of  the  horse.  The  same  peace  also  conceded 
to  them  the  militia,  a  trust  which  Charles  I.  had  said  he 
would  not  devolve  on  the  Parliament  of  England,  "  not 
for  an  hour  ! "  Milton  is  indignant  that  these  indulgences, 
which  had  been  refused  to  their  obedience,  should  have 
been  extorted  by  their  rebellion,  and  the  massacre  of 
"  200,000  Protestants."  This  is  an  exaggeration  of  a 
butchery  sufficiently  tragic  in  its  real  proportions,  and  in 
a  later  tract  (EikonoMastes)  he  reduces  it  to  154,000. 
Though  the  savage  Irish  are  barbarians,  uncivilised  and 
uncivilisable,  the  Observations  distinctly  affirm  the  new 
principle  of  toleration.  Though  popery  be  a  supersti- 
tion, the  death  of  all  true  religion,  still  conscience  is  not 
within  the  cognisance  of  the  magistrate.  The  civil  sword 
is  to  be  employed  against  civil  offences  only.  In  adding 
that  the  one  exception  to  this  toleration  is  atheism,  Milton 
is  careful  to  state  this  limitation  as  being  the  tolera- 

H  2 


100  SECOND  PERIOD.     1640— 1G60.  [chap. 

tion  professed   by  Parliament,  and   not    as   his  private 
opinion. 

So  well  satisfied  were  the  Council  with  their  secretary's 
Observations  on  the  peace  of  Kilkenny,  that  they  next 
imposed  upon  him  a  far  more  important  labour,  a  reply  to 
the  Eikon  Basililie.  The  execution  of  Charles  I.  was  not 
an  act  of  vengeance,  but  a  measure  of  public  safety.  If,  as 
Hallani  affirms,  there  mingled  in  the  motives  of  the  managers 
any  strain  of  personal  ill-will,  this  was  merged  in  the 
necessity  of  securing,  themselves  from  the  vengeance  of 
the  King,  and  what  they  had  gained  from  being  taken 
back.  They  were  alarmed  by  the  reaction  which  had  set 
in,  and  had  no  choice  but  to  strengthen  themselves  by  a 
daring  policy.  But  the  first  effect  of  the  removal  of  the 
King  by  violence  was  to  give  a  powerful  stimulus  to  the 
reaction  already  in  progress.  The  groan  which  burst  from 
the  spectators  before  "Whitehall  on  January  30,  1649, 
was  only  representative  of  the  thrill  of  horror  which  ran 
through  England  and  Scotland  in  the  next  ten  days. 
This  feeling  found  expression  in  a  book  entitled  "  Eikon 
Basililie,  the  portraiture  of  his  sacred  majesty  in  his 
solitude  and  sufferings."  The  book  was,  it  should  seem, 
composed  by  Dr.  Gauden,  but  professed  to  be  an  authen- 
tic copy  of  papers  written  by  the  King.  It  is  possible 
that  Gauden  may  have  had  in  his  hands  some  written 
scraps  of  the  King's  meditations.  If  he  had  such,  he 
only  used  them  as  hints  to  work  upon.  Gauden  was  a 
churchman  whom  his  friends  might  call  liberal,  and 
his  enemies  time-serving.  He  was  a  churchman  of  the 
stamp  of  Archbishop  "Williams,  and  preferred  bishops  and 
the  Common-prayer  to  presbyters  and  extempore  sermons, 
but  did  not  think  the  difference  between  the  two  of  the 
essence  of  religion.     In  better  times  Gauden  would  have 


viir.]  REPLY  TO  EIKON  BASILIKE.  101 

passed  for  "broad,  though,  his  latitudinarianisni  was  more 
the  result  of  love  of  ease  than  of  philosophy.  Though  a 
royalist  he  sat  in  the  Westminster  Assembly,  and  took 
the  covenant,  for  -which  compliance  he  nearly  lost  the 
reward  which,  after  the  Eestoration,  became  his  due. 
Like  the  university-bred  men  of  his  day,  Gauden  was 
not  a  man  of  ideas,  but  of  style.  In  the  present  instance 
the  idea  was  supplied  by  events.  The  saint  and  martyr, 
the  man  of  sorrows,  praying  for  his  murderers,  the  King, 
who  renounced  an  earthly  kingdom  to  gain  a  heavenly, 
and  who  in  return  for  his  benefits  received  from  an  un- 
thankful people  a  crown  of  thorns — this  was  the  theme 
supplied  to  the  royalist  advocate.  Poet's  imagination 
had  never  invented  one  more  calculated  to  touch  the 
popular  heart.  This  imitatio  Christi  to  which  every 
private  Christian  theoretically  aspires,  had  been  realised  by 
a  true  prince  upon  an  actual  scaffold  with  a  graceful 
dignity  of  demeanour,  of  which  it  may  be  said,  that 
nothing  in  life  became  him  like  the  leaving  it. 

This  moving  situation  Gauden,  no  mean  stylist,  set  out 
in  the  best  academical  language  of  the  period.  Frigid 
and  artificial  it  may  read  now,  but  the  passion  and  pity, 
which  is  not  in  the  book,  was  supplied  by  the  readers  of 
the  time.  And  men  are  not  dainty  as  to  phrase  when 
they  meet  with  an  expression  of  their  own  sentiments. 
The  readers  of  Eikon  Basilike — and  forty-seven  editions 
were  necessary  to  supply  the  demand  of  a  population  of 
eight  millions — attributed  to  the  pages  of  the  book  emo- 
tions raised  in  themselves  by  the  tragic  catastrophe. 
They  never  doubted  that  the  meditations  were  those  of 
the  royal  martyr,  and  held  the  book,  in  the  words  of 
Sir  Edward  Nicholas,  for  "  the  most  exquisite,  pious,  and 
princely  piece  ever  written."      The  Parliament  thought 


102  SECOXD  PERIOD.     1610—1660.  [chap. 

themselves  called  upon  to  put  forth  a  reply.  If  one  book 
could  cause  such  a  commotion  of  spirits,  another  hook 
could  allay  it — the  ordinary  illusion  of  those  who  do  not 
consider  that  the  vogue  of  a  printed  appeal  depends,  not 
on  the  contents  of  the  appeal,  hut  on  a  predisposition  of 
the  puhlic  temper. 

Selden,  the  most  learned  man,  not  only  of  his  party, 
hut  of  Englishmen,  was  first  thought  of,  hut  the  task  was 
finally  assigned  to  the  Latin  Secretary.  Milton's  ready 
pen  completed  the  answer,  Eikonolclastes,  a  quarto  of  242 
pages,  before  October,  1649.  It  is,  like  all  answers, 
worthless  as  a  book.  Eikonoklastes,  the  Image-breaker, 
takes  the  Image,  Eikon,  paragraph  by  paragraph,  turn- 
ing it  round,  and  asserting  the  negative.  To  the  Koyalist 
view  of  the  points  in  dispute  Milton  opposes  the  Indepen- 
dent view.  A  refutation,  which  follows  each  step  of  an 
adverse  book,  is  necessarily  devoid  of  originality.  But 
Milton  is  worse  than  tedious ;  his  reply  is  in  a  tone  of 
rude  railing  and  insolent  swagger,  which  would  have  been 
always  unbecoming,  but  which  at  this  moment  was  grossly 
indecent. 

Milton  must,  however,  be  acquitted  of  one  charge 
which  has  been  made  against  him,  viz.,  that  he  taunts  the 
king  with  his  familiarity  with  Shakespeare.  The  charge 
rests  on  a  misunderstanding.  In  quoting  Richard  III.  in 
illustration  of  his  own  meaning,  Milton  says,  "  I  shall  not 
instance  an  abstruse  author,  wherein  the  King  might  be 
less  conversant,  but  one  whom  we  well  know  was  the 
closet  companion  of  these  his  solitudes,  William  Shake- 
speare." Though  not  an  overt  gibe,  there  certainly  lurks 
an  insinuation  to  Milton's  Puritan  readers,  to  whom 
stage  plays  were  an  abomination — an  unworthy  device 
of  rhetoric,  as  appealing  to  a  superstition  in  others  which 


vi"-]  REPLY  TO  EIKON  BASILIKE.  103 

the  writer  himself  does  not  share.  In  Milton's  contemp- 
tuous reference  to  Sidney's  Arcadia  as  a  vain  amatorious 
poem,  we  feel  that  the  finer  sense  of  the  author  of 
L' Allegro  has  suffered  from  immersion  in  the  slough  of 
religious  and  political  faction. 

Gauden,  raking  up  material  from  all  quarters,  had 
inserted  in  his  compilation  a  prayer  taken  from  the 
Arcadia.  Milton  mercilessly  works  this  topic  against 
his  adversary.  It  is  surprising  that  this  plagiarism  from 
so  well-known  a  hook  as  the  Arcadia  should  not  have 
opened  Milton's  eyes  to  the  unauthentic  character  of  the 
Eikon.  He  alludes,  indeed,  to  a  suspicion  which  was 
ahroad  that  one  of  the  royal  chaplains  was  a  secret 
coadjutor.  But  he  knew  nothing  of  Gauden  at  the  time 
of  writing  the  Eilconoldastes,  and  prohahly  he  never  came 
to  know  anything.  The  secret  of  the  authorship  of  the 
Eikon  was  well  kept,  heing  known  oidy  to  a  very  few 
persons — the  two  royal  brothers,  Bishop  Morley,  the  Earl 
of  Bristol,  and  Clarendon.  These  were  all  safe  men,  and 
Gauden  was  not  likely  to  proclaim  himself  an  impostor. 
He  pleaded  his  authorship,  however,  as  a  claim  to  prefer- 
ment at  the  Bestoration,  when  the  church  spoils  came  to 
he  partitioned  among  the  conquerors,  and  he  received  the 
bishopric  of  Exeter.  A  bishopric — because  less  than  the 
highest  preferment  could  not  be  offered  to  one  whose  pen 
had  done  such  signal  service ;  and  Exeter — because  the 
poorest  see  (then  valued  at  500Z.  a  year)  was  good  enough 
for  a  man  who  had  taken  the  covenant  and  complied  with 
the  usurping  government.  By  ceaseless  importunity  the 
author  of  the  Eikon  Basilike  obtained  afterwards  the  see 
of  "Worcester,  while  the  portion  of  the  author  of  Eikono- 
klastes  was  poverty,  infamy,  and  calumny.  A  century 
after   Milton's   death  it  was  safe  for  the  most  popular 


104  SECOND  PERIOD.     1610— 16G0.  [en.  vin 

writer  of  the  day  to  say  that  the  prayer  from  the  Arcadia 
had  heeu  interpolated  in  the  Eikon  hy  Milton  himself, 
and  then  hy  him  charged  upon  the  King  as  a  plagiarism. 
(Johnson,  Lives  of  the  Poets.) 


CHAPTER  IX. 

MILTON   AND   SALMASIUS.  —BLINDNESS. 

The  mystery  which  long  surrounded  the  authorship  of 
Eikon  Basililce  lends  a  literary  interest  to  Mil  ton's  share  in 
that  controversy,  which  does  not  "belong  to  his  next  ap- 
pearance in  print.  Besides,  his  pamphlets  against  Salma- 
sius  and  Morus  are  written  in  Latin,  and  to  the  general 
reader  in  this  country  and  in  America  inaccessible  in 
consequence.  In  Milton's  day  it  was  otherwise ;  the 
widest  circle  of  readers  could  only  be  reached  through 
Latin.  For  this  reason,  when  Charles  II.  wanted  a 
public  vindication  of  his  father's  memory,  it  was  indis- 
pensable that  it  should  be  composed  in  that  language. 
The  Eikon  was  accordingly  turned  into  Latin,  by  one  of 
the  royal  chaplains,  Earle,  afterwards  Bishop  of  Salisbury. 
But  this  was  not  enough ;  a  defence  in  form  was  necessary, 
an  Apologia  Socratis,  such  as  Plato  composed  for  his 
master  after  his  death.  It  must  not  only  be  written  in 
Latin,  but  in  such  Latin  as  to  ensure  its  being  read. 

In  1349  Charles  II.  was  living  at  the  Hague,  and  it  so 
happened  that  the  man,  who  was  in  the  highest  repute  in 
all  Europe  as  a  Latinist,  was  professor  at  the  neighbouring 
university  of  Leyden.     Salmasius  (Claude  de  Saumaise) 


106  SECOND  PERIOD.     16 10— 1660.  [chap. 

■was  commissioned  to  prepare  a  manifesto,  which  should  bo 
at  once  a  vindication  of  Charles's  memory,  and  an  indict- 
ment against  the  regicide  government.  Salmasius  was  a 
man  of  enormous  reading  and  no  judgment.  He  says  of 
himself  that  he  wrote  Latin  more  easily  than  his  mother- 
tongue  (French).  And  his  Latin  was  all  the  more  read- 
able because  it  was  not  classical  or  idiomatic.  With  all 
his  reading — and  Isaac  Casaubon  had  said  of  him  when 
in  his  teens  that  he  had  incredible  erudition — he  was 
still,  at  sixty,  qiute  unacquainted  with  public  affairs,  and 
had  neither  the  politician's  tact  necessary  to  draw  a  state 
paper  as  Clarendon  would  have  drawn  it,  nor  the  literary 
tact  which  had  enabled  Erasmus  to  command  the  ear  of 
the  public.  Salmasius  undertook  his  task  as  a  profes- 
sional advocate,  though  without  pay,  and  Milton  accepted 
the  duty  of  replying  as  advocate  for  the  Parliament,  also 
without  reward ;  he  was  fighting  for  a  cause  which  was  not 
another's  but  his  own. 

Salmasius'  Defermo  regia — that  was  the  title  of  his 
book — reached  this  country  before  the  end  of  1G49.  The 
Council  of  State,  in  very  unnecessary  alarm,  issued  a  pro- 
hibition. On  8th  January,  1650,  the  Council  ordered 
"  that  Mr.  Milton  do  prepare  something  in  answer  to  the 
book  of  Salmasius."  Early  in  March,  1651,  Milton's 
answer,  entitled  Pro  Populo  Anglicano  Defensio,  was  out. 

Milton  was  as  much  above  Salmasius  in  mental  power, 
as  he  was  inferior  to  him  in  extent  of  book  knowledge. 
But  the  conditions  of  retort  which  he  had  chosen  to 
accept  neutralised  this  superiority.  His  greater  power 
was  spent  in  a  greater  force  of  invective.  Instead  of 
setting  out  the  case  of  the  Parliament  in  all  the  strength 
of  which  it  was  capable,  Milton  is  intent  upon  tripping 
up  Salmasius,  contradicting  him,  and  making  him  odious 


ix.]  MILTON  AND  SALMASIUS.  107 

or  ridiculous.  He  called  his  book  a  Defence,  of  the  People 
of  England ;  but  when  he  should  have  been  justifying 
his  clients  from  the  charges  of  rebellion  and  regicide 
before  the  bar  of  Europe,  Milton  is  bending  all  his  inven- 
tion upon  personalities.  He  exaggerates  the  foibles  of 
Salmasius,  his  vanity,  and  the  vanity  of  Madame  de 
Saumaise,  her  ascendancy  over  her  husband,  his  narrow 
pedantry,  his  ignorance  of  everything  but  grammar  and 
words.  He  exhausts  the  Latin  vocabulary  of  abuse  to 
pile  up  every  epithet  of  contumely  and  execration  on  the 
head  of  his  adversary.  It  but  amounts  to  calling  Salma- 
sius fool  and  knave  through  a  couple  of  hundred  pages, 
till  the  exaggeration  of  the  style  defeats  the  orator's  pur- 
pose, and  we  end  by  regarding  the  whole,  not  as  a  serious 
pleading,  but  as  an  epideictic  display.  Hobbes  said  truly 
that  the  two  books  were  "  like  two  declamations,  for  and 
against,  made  by  one  and  the  same  man  as  a  rhetorical 
exercise  "  (Behemoth). 

Milton's  Defensio  was  not  calculated  to  advance  the 
cause  of  the  Parliament,  and  there  is  no  evidence  that  it 
produced  any  effect  upon  the  public,  beyond  that  of  rais- 
ing Milton's  personal  credit.  That  England,  and  Puritan 
England,  where  humane  studies  were  swamped  in  a  bib- 
lical brawl,  should  produce  a  man  who  could  write  Latin 
as  well  as  Salmasius,  was  a  great  surprise  to  the  learned 
world  in  Holland.  Salmasius  was  unpopular  at  Leyden, 
and  there  was  therefore  a  predisposition  to  regard  Milton's 
book  with  favour.  Salmasius  was  twenty  years  older  than 
Milton,  and  in  these  literary  digladiations  readers  are 
always  ready  to  side  with  a  new  writer.  The  contending 
interests  of  the  two  great  English  parties,  the  wider  issue 
between  republic  and  absolutism,  the  speculative  inquiry 
into  the  right  of  resistance,   were  lost  sight  of  by  the 


108  SECOND  PERIOD.     1610—1660.  [chap. 

spectators  of  this  literary  duel.  The  only  question  was 
■whether  Sahnasius  could  heat  the  new  champion,  or  the 
new  man  heat  Salmasius,  at  a  match  of  vituperation. 

Salmasius  of  course  put  in  a  rejoinder.  His  rapid  pen 
found  no  difficulty  in  turning  off  300  pages  of  fluent 
Latin.  It  was  his  last  occupation.  He  died  at  Spa, 
where  he  was  taking  the  waters,  in  September,  1653,  and 
his  reply  was  not  published  till  1660,  after  the  Eestoration, 
when  all  interest  had  died  out  of  the  controversy.  If  it 
he  true  that  the  work  was  written  at  Spa,  without  hooks 
at  hand,  it  is  certainly  a  miraculous  effort  of  memory.  It 
does  no  credit  to  Salmasius.  He  had  raked  together,  after 
the  example  of  Scioppius  against  Scaliger,  all  the  tittle- 
tattle  which  the  English  exiles  had  to  retail  about  Milton 
and  his  antecedents.  Bramhall,  who  bore  Milton  a  special 
grudge,  was  the  channel  of  some  of  this  scandal,  and 
Biamhall's  source  was  possibly  Chappell,  the  tutor  with 
whom  Milton  had  had  the  early  misunderstanding.  (See 
above  p.  6).  If  any  one  thinks  that  classical  studies  of 
themselves  cultivate  the  taste  and  the  sentiments,  let  him 
look  into  Salmasius's  Responsio.  There  he  will  see  the 
first  scholar  of  his  age  not  thinking  it  unbecoming  to  taunt 
Milton  with  his  blindness,  in  such  language  as  this  :  "  a 
puppy,  once  my  pretty  little  man,  now  blear-eyed,  or 
rather  a  blindling  ;  having  never  had  any  mental  vision, 
he  has  now  lost  his  bodily  sight ;  a  silly  coxcomb,  fancy- 
ing himself  a  beauty;  an  unclean  beast,  with  nothing 
more  human  about  him  than  his  guttering  eyelids;  the 
fittest  doom  for  him  would  be  to  hang  him  on  the  highest 
gallows,  and  set  his  head  on  the  Tower  of  London."  These 
are  some  of  the  incivilities,  not  by  any  means  the  most 
revolting,  but  such  as  I  dare  reproduce,  of  this  literary 
warfare. 


ix.]  MILTON  AND  SALMASIUS.  109 

Salmasius's  taunt  about  Milton's  venal  pen  is  no  less 
false  than  his  other  gibes.  The  places  of  those  who 
served  the  Commonwealth,  were  places  of  "  hard  work  and 
short  rations."  Milton  never  received  for  his  Dcfensio  a 
sixpence  beyond  his  official  salary.  It  has  indeed  been 
asserted  that  he  was  paid  10007.  for  it  by  order  of  Parlia- 
ment, and  this  falsehood  having  been  adopted  by  Johnson 
— himself  a  pensioner — has  passed  into  all  the  biographies, 
and  will  no  doubt  continue  to  be  repeated  to  the  end  of 
time.  This  is  a  just  nemesis  upon  Milton,  who  on  his 
part  had  twitted  Salmasius  with  having  been  complimented 
by  the  exiled  King  with  a  purse  of  100  Jacobuses  for  his 
performance.  The  one  insinuation  was  as  false  as  the 
other.  Charles  II.  was  too  poor  to  offer  more  than  thanks. 
Milton  was  too  proud  to  receive  for  defending  his  country 
what  the  Parliament  was  willing  to  pay.  Sir  Peter 
"YVentworth,  of  Lillingston  Lovell,  in  Oxfordshire,  left  in 
his  will  100Z.  to  Milton  for  his  book  against  Salmasius. 
But  this  was  long  after  the  Eestoration,  and  Milton  did 
not  live  to  receive  the  legacy. 

Instead  of  receiving  an  honorarium  for  his  Defence  of 
the  English  People,  Milton  had  paid  for  it  a  sacrifice  for 
which  money  could  not  compensate  him.  His  eyesight, 
though  quick,  as  he  was  a  proficient  with  the  rapier,  had 
never  been  strong.  His  constant  headaches,  his  late 
study,  and  (thinks  Phillips)  his  perpetual  tampering  with 
physic  to  preserve  his  sight,  concurred  to  bring  the 
calamity  upon  him.  It  had  been  steadily  coming  on  for 
a  dozen  years  before,  and  about  1650  the  sight  of  the  left 
eye  was  gone.  He  was  warned  by  his  doctor  that  if  he 
persisted  in  using  the  remaining  eye  for  book-work,  he 
would  lose  that  too.  "  The  choice  lay  before  me,"  Milton 
writes  in  the  Second  Defence,  "  between  dereliction  of  a 


110  SECOND  PERIOD.     1610—1660.  [chap. 

supreme  duty  and  loss  of  eyesight ;  in  such  a  case  I  could 
not  listen  to  the  physician,  not  if  iEsculapius  himself  had 
spoken  from  his  sanctuary ;  I  could  not  hut  obey  that 
inward  monitor,  I  know  not  what,  that  spake  to  me  from 
heaven.  1  considered  with  myself  that  many  had  pur- 
chased less  good  with  worse  ill,  as  they  who  give  their 
lives  to  reap  only  glory,  and  I  thereupon  concluded  to 
employ  the  little  remaining  eyesight  I  was  to  enjoy  in 
doing  this,  the  greatest  service  to  the  common  weal  it  was 
in  my  power  to  render." 

It  was  ahout  the  early  part  of  the  year  1652  that  the 
calamity  was  consummated.  At  the  age  of  forty-three  he 
was  in  total  darkness.  The  deprivation  of  sight,  one  of 
the  severest  afflictions  of  which  humanity  is  capable,  falls 
more  heavily  on  the  man  whose  occupation  lies  among 
hooks,  than  upon  others.  He  who  has  most  to  lose,  loses 
most.  To  most  persons  hooks  are  hut  an  amusement,  an 
interlude  between  the  hours  of  serious  occupation.  The 
scholar  is  he  who  has  found  the  key  to  knowledge,  and 
knows  his  way  about  in  the  world  of  printed  books.  To 
find  this  key,  to  learn  the  map  of  this  country,  requires  a 
long  apprenticeship.  This  is  a  point  few  men  can  hope  to 
roach  much  before  the  age  of  forty.  Milton  had  attained 
it  only  to  find  fruition  snatched  from  him.  He  had 
barely  time  to  spell  one  line  in  the  book  of  wisdom,  before, 
like  the  wizard's  volume  in  romance,  it  was  hopelessly 
closed  against  him  for  ever.  Any  human  being  is  shut 
out  by  loss  of  sight  from  accustomed  pleasures,  the  scholar 
is  shut  out  from  knowledge.  Shut  out  at  forty-three, 
Avhen  his  great  work  was  not  even  begun  !  He  consoles 
himself  with  the  fancy  that  in  his  pamphlet,  the  Defcnsio, 
he  had  done  a  great  work  {quanta  maxima  quivi)  for  his 
country.     This  poor  delusion  helped   him  doubtless  to 


ix.]  BLINDNESS.  Ill 

support  his  calamity.  He  could  not  foresee  that,  in 
less  than  ten  years,  the  great  work  would  be  totally  anni- 
hilated, his  pamphlet  would  be  merged  in  the  obsolete 
mass  of  civil  war  tracts,  and  the  Defensio,  on  which  he 
had  expended  his  last  year  of  eyesight,  only  mentioned 
because  it  had  been  written  by  the  author  of  Paradise 
Lost. 

The  nature  of  Milton's  disease  is  not  ascertainable  from 
the  account  he  has  given  of  it.  In  the  well-known  passage 
of  Paradise  Lost,  iii.  25,  he  hesitates  between  amaurosis 
(drop  serene)  and  cataract  (suffusion) 

So  thick  a  drop  sereue  hath  quench'd  their  orbs, 
Or  dim  suffusion  veil'd. 

A  medical  friend  referred  to  by  Professor  Alfred  Stern, 
tells  him  that  some  of  the  symptoms  are  more  like 
glaucoma.  Milton  himself  has  left  such  an  account  as  a 
patient  ignorant  of  the  anatomy  of  the  organ  could  give. 
It  throws  no  light  on  the  nature  of  the  malady.  But  it  is 
characteristic  of  Milton  that  even  his  affliction  does  not 
destroy  his  solicitude  about  his  personal  appearance.  The 
taunts  of  his  enemies  about  "  the  lack-lustre  eye,  guttering 
with  prevalent  rheum  "  did  not  pass  unfelt.  In  his  Second, 
Defence  Milton  informs  the  world  that  his  eyes  "  are  ex- 
ternally uninjured.  They  shine  with  an  unclouded  light, 
just  like  the  eyes  of  one  whose  vision  is  perfect.  This  is 
the  only  point  in  which  I  am,  against  my  will,  a  hypo- 
crite." The  vindication  appears  again  in  Sonnet  xix. 
"  These  eyes,  though  clear  To  outward  view  of  blemish  or 
of  spot."  In  later  years,  when  the  exordium  of  Book  iii.  of 
Paradise  Lost  was  composed,  in  the  pathetic  story  of  his 
blindness,  this  little  touch  of  vanity  has  disappeared,  as 
incompatible  with  the  solemn  dignity  of  the  occasion. 


CHAPTER  X. 

MILTON  AND   MORUS — THE   SECOND    DEFENCE — THE  DEFENCE 

FOR   HIMSELF. 

Civil  history  is  largely  a  history  of  wars  between  states, 
and  literary  history  is  no  less  the  record  of  quarrels  in 
print  between  jealous  authors.  Poets  and  artists,  more 
susceptible  than  practical  men,  seem  to  live  a  life  of  per- 
petual wrangle.  The  history  of  these  petty  feuds  is  not 
healthy  intellectual  food,  it  is  at  best  amusing  scandal. 
But  these  quarrels  of  authors  do  not  degrade  the  authors 
in  our  eyes,  they  only  show  them  to  be,  what  we 
knew,  as  vain,  irritable,  and  opinionative  as  other  men. 
Ben  Jonson,  Dryden,  Pope,  Voltaire,  Eousseau,  belabour 
their  enemies,  and  we  see  nothing  incongruous  in  their 
doing  so.  It  is  not  so  when  the  awful  majesty  of  Milton 
descends  from  the  empyrean  throne  of  contemplation  to 
use  the  language  of  the  gutter  or  the  fish-market.  The 
bathos  is  unthinkable.  The  universal  intellect  of  Bacon 
shrank  to  the  paltry  pursuit  of  place.  The  disproportion 
between  the  intellectual  capaciousness  and  the  moral  aim 
jars  upon  the  sense  of  fitness,  and  the  name  of  Bacon, 
"  wisest,  meanest,"  has  passed  into  a  proverb.  Milton's  fall 
is  far  worse.    It  is  not  here  a  union  of  grasp  of  mind  with  an 


en.  x.]  MILTON  AND  MORUS.  113 

ignoble  ambition,  but  the  plunge  of  the  moral  nature  itself 
from  the  highest  heights  to  that  despicable  region  of 
vulgar  scurrility  and  libel,  which  is  below  the  level  of 
average  gentility  and  education.  The  name  of  Milton  is  a 
synonym  for  sublimity.  He  has  endowed  our  language 
with  the  loftiest  and  noblest  poetry  it  possesses,  and  the 
same  man  is  found  employing  speech  for  the  most  unworthy 
purpose  to  which  it  can  be  put,  that  of  defaming  and 
vilifying  a  personal  enemy,  and  an  enemy  so  mean  that 
barely  to  have  been  mentioned  by  Milton  had  been  an 
honour  to  him.  In  Salmasius,  Milton  had  at  least  been 
measuring  his  Latin  against  tbe  Latin  of  the  first  classicist 
of  the  age.  In  Alexander  Morus  he  wreaked  august 
periods  of  Roman  eloquence  upon  a  vagabond  preacher,  of 
chance  fortunes  and  tarnished  reputation,  a  grceculus 
esuriens,  who  appeared  against  Milton  by  the  turn  of 
accidents,  and  not  as  the  representative  of  the  opposite 
principle.  In  crushing  Morus,  Milton  could  not  beguile 
himself  with  the  idea  that  he  was  serving  a  cause. 

In  1652  our  country  began  to  reap  the  fruits  of  the 
costly  efforts  it  had  made  to  obtain  good  government.  A 
central  authority  was  at  last  established,  stronger  than 
any  which  had  existed  since  Elisabeth,  and  one  which 
extended  over  Scotland  and  Ireland,  no  less  than  over 
England.  The  ecclesiastical  and  dynastic  aims  of  the 
Stuart  monarchy  had  been  replaced  by  a  national  policy, 
in  which  the  interests  of  the  people  of  Great  Britain  sprang 
to  the  first  place.  The  immediate  consequence  of  this 
union  of  vigour  and  patriotism,  in  the  government,  was  the 
self-assertion  of  England  as  a  commercial,  and  therefore 
as  a  naval  power.  This  awakened  spirit  of  conscious 
strength  meant  war  with  the  Dutch,  who  while  England 
was  pursuing  ecclesiastical  ends,  had  possessed  themselves 

i 


114  SECOND  PEEIOD.     1640— 16G0.  [chap. 

of  the  trade  of  the  world.  War  accordingly  broke  out 
early  in  1G52.  Even  before  it  came  to  real  fighting,  the 
Avar  of  pamphlets  had  recommenced.  The  prohibition  of 
Salmasius'  Defensio  regia  annulled  itself  as  a  matter  of 
course,  and  Salmasius  was  free  to  prepare  a  second 
Defensio  in  answer  to  Milton.  For  the  most  vulnerable 
point  of  the  neAv  English  Commonwealth,  was  through  the 
odium  excited  on  the  continent  against  regicide.  And 
the  quarter  from  which  the  monarchical  pamphlets  were 
hurled  against  the  English  republic,  was  the  press  of  the 
republic  of  the  United  Provinces,  the  country  which  had 
set  the  first  example  of  successful  rebellion  against  its  law- 
ful prince. 

Before  Salmasius'  reply  was  ready,  there  was  launched 
from  the  Hague,  in  March,  1652,  a  virulent  royalist 
piece  in  Latin,  under  the  title  of  Regii  sanguinis  clamor 
ad  coelum  (Cry  of  the  King's  blood  to  Heaven  against  the 
English  parricides).  Its  160  pages  contained  the  usual 
royalist  invective  in  a  rather  common  style  of  hyperbolical 
declamation,  such  as  that "  in  comparison  of  the  execution 
of  Charles  I.,  the  guilt  of  the  Jews  in  crucifying  Christ 
was  as  nothing."  Exaggerated  praises  of  Salmasius  Avere 
followed  by  scurrilous  and  rabid  abuse  of  Milton.  In  the 
style  of  the  most  shameless  Jesuit  lampoon,  the  Ampin'- 
theai.nnn  or  the  Scaliger  hypobolimceus,  and  Avith  Jesuit 
tactics,  every  odious  crime  is  imputed  to  the  object  of 
the  satire,  without  regard  to  truth  or  probability.  Exiles 
are  proverbially  credulous,  and  it  is  hkely  enough  that 
the  gossip  of  the  English  refugees  at  the  Hague  was  much 
employed  in  improving  or  inventing  stories  about  the 
man,  avIio  had  dared  to  answer  the  royalist  champion  in 
Latin  as  good  as  his  own.  Salmasius  in  his  Defensio  had 
employed  these  stories,  distorting  the  eATents  of  Milton's 


x.]  MILTON  AND  MORUS.  115 

life  to  discredit  Lira.  But  for  the  author  of  the  Clamor 
there  was  no  such  excuse,  for  the  hook  was  composed  in 
England,  by  an  author  living  in  Oxford  and  London,  Avho 
had  every  opportunity  for  informing  himself  accurately 
of  the  facts  about  Milton's  life  and  conversation.  He 
chose  rather  to  heap  up  at  random  the  traditional  vocabu- 
lary of  defamation,  which  the  Catholic  theologians  had 
employed  for  some  generations  past,  as  their  best  weapon 
against  their  adversaries.  In  these  infamous  productions, 
hatched  by  celibate  pedants  in  the  foul  atmosphere  of  the 
Jesuit  colleges,  the  gamut  of  charges  always  ranges  from 
bad  grammar  to  unnatural  crime.  The  only  circumstance 
which  can  be  alleged  in  mitigation  of  the  excesses  of  the 
Regit  sanguinis  clamor  is  that  Milton  had  provoked  the 
onfall  by  his  own  violence.  He  who  throws  dirt  must 
expect  that  dirt  will  be  thrown  back  at  him,  and  when  it 
comes  to  mud-throwing,  the  blackguard  has,  as  it  is  right 
that  he  should  have,  the  best  of  it. 

The  author  of  the  Clamor  was  Peter  Du  Moulin,  a  son 
of  the  celebrated  French  Calvinist  preacher  of  the  same 
name.  The  author  not  daring  to  entrust  his  pamphlet  to 
an  English  press,  had  sent  it  over  to  Holland,  where  it 
was  printed  under  the  supervision  of  Alexander  Morus. 
This  Morus  (More  or  Moir)  was  of  Scottish  parentage,  but 
born  (1G16)  at  Castres,  Avhere  his  father  was  principal  of 
the  Protestant  college.  Morus  fitted  the  Clamor  with  a 
preface,  in  which  Milton  was  further  reviled,  and  styled  a 
"monstrum  horrendum,  informe,  ingens,  cui  lumen 
ademtum."  The  secret  of  the  authorship  was  strictly 
kept,  and  Morus  having  been  known  to  be  concerned  it: 
the  publication,  was  soon  transformed  in  public  belief  into 
the  author.  So  it  was  reported  to  Milton,  and  so  Milton 
believed.     He  nursed  his  wrath,  and  took  two  years  to 

i  2 


116  SECOND  PERIOD.    1610— 16G0.  [chap. 

meditate  his  blow.  He  caused  inquiries  to  be  made  into 
Morus's  antecedents.  It  happened  that  Morus's  conduct 
had  been  wanting  in  discretion,  especially  in  his  relations 
with  women.  He  had  been  equally  imprudent  in  his 
utterances  on  some  of  the  certainties  of  Calvinistic  divinity. 
It  was  easy  to  collect  any  amount  of  evidence  under  both 
these  heads.  The  system  of  kirk  discipline  offered  a 
ready-made  machinery  of  espionage  and  delation.  The 
standing  jest  of  the  fifteenth  century  on  the  "  governante  " 
of  the  cure  was  replaced,  in  Calvinistic  countries,  by  the 
anxiety  of  every  minister  to  detect  his  brother  minister  in 
any  intimacy  upon  which  a  scandalous  construction  could 
be  put. 

Morus  endeavoured,  through  every  channel  at  his  com- 
mand, to  convince  Milton  that  he  was  not  the  author  of 
the  Glamor.  He  could  have  saved  himself  by  revealing 
the  real  author,  who  was  lurking  all  the  Avhile  close  to 
Milton's  elbow,  and  whose  safety  depended  on  Morus' 
silence.  This  high-minded  respect  for  another's  secret  is 
more  to  Morus'  honour,  than  any  of  the  petty  gossip  about 
him  is  to  his  discredit.  He  had  nothing  to  offer,  there- 
fore, but  negative  assurances,  and  mere  denial  weighed 
nothing  with  Milton,  who  was  fully  convinced  that  Morus 
lied  from  terror.  Milton's  Defensio  Secnnda  came  out  in 
May,  1654.  In  this  piece  (written  in  Latin)  Morus  is 
throughout  assumed  to  be  the  author  of  the  Clamor,  and 
as  such  is  pursued  through  many  pages  in  a  strain  of 
invective,  in  which  banter  is  mingled  with  ferocity.  The 
Hague  tittle-tattle  about  Morus's  love-affairs  is  set  forth 
in  the  pomp  of  Milton's  loftiest  Latin.  Sonorous  periods 
could  hardly  be  more  disproportioned  to  their  material 
content.  To  have  kissed  a  girl  is  painted  as  the  blackest 
of  crimes.     The   sublime   and   the   ridiculous    are   hero 


x.]  MILTON  AND  ATORUS.  117 

blended  without  the  step  between.  Milton  descends  even 
to  abuse  the  publisher,  Viae,  who  had  officially  signed  his 
name  to  Morus's  preface.  The  mixture  of  fanatical  choler 
and  grotesque  jocularity,  in  which  he  rolls  forth  his 
charges  of  incontinence  against  Morus,  and  of  petty 
knavery  against  Viae,  is  only  saved  from  being  unseemly 
by  being  ridiculous.  The  comedy  is  complete  when  we 
remember  that  Morus  had  not  written  the  Clamor,  nor 
Viae  the  preface.  Milton's  rage  blinded  him ;  he  is  mad 
Ajax  castigating  innocent  sheep  instead  of  Achreans. 

The  Latin  pamphlets  are  indispensable  to  a  knowledge 
of  Milton's  disposition.  We  see  in  them  his  grand  dis- 
dain of  his  opponents,  reproducing  the  concentrated  in- 
tellectual scorn  of  the  Latin  Persius  ;  his  certainty  of  the 
absolute  justice  of  his  own  cause,  and  the  purity  of  his  own 
motives.  This  lofty  cast  of  thought  is  combined  with  an 
eagerness  to  answer  the  meanest  taunts.  The  intense  sub- 
jectivity of  the  poet  breaks  out  in  these  paragraphs,  and 
while  he  should  be  stating  the  case  of  the  republic,  he  holds 
Europe  listening  to  an  account  of  himself,  his  accomplish- 
ments, his  studies  and  travels,  his  stature,  the  colour  of  his 
eyes,  his  skill  in  fencing,  &c.  These  egoistic  utterances 
must  have  seemed  to  Milton's  contemporaries  to  be  intru- 
sive and  irrelevant  vanity.  Paradise  Lost  was  not  as  yet, 
and  to  the  Council  of  State  Milton  was,  what  he  was 
to  Whitelocke,  "a  blind  man  who  wrote  Latin."  But 
these  paragraphs,  in  which  he  talks  of  himself,  are  to  us 
the  only  living  fragments  out  of  many  hundred  worthless 
pages. 

To  the  Defensio  Secunda  there  was  of  course  a  reply 
by  Morus.  It  was  entitled  Fides  Puhlica,  because  it 
was  largely  composed  of  testimonials  to  character.  "When 
one  priest   charges   another   with  unchastity,  the  world 


118  SECOND  PERIOD.     1640— 1GG0.  [en.  x. 

looks  on  and  laughs.  But  it  is  no  laughing  matter  to 
the  defendant  in  such  an  action.  He  can  always  hring 
exculpatory  evidence,  and  in  spite  of  any  evidence  he  is 
always  helieved  to  he  guilty.  The  effect  of  Milton's 
furious  denunciation  of  Morus  had  been  to  damage  his 
credit  in  religious  circles,  and  to  make  mothers  of  families 
shy  of  allowing  him  to  visit  at  their  houses. 

Milton  might  have  been  content  with  a  victory  which, 
as  Gibbon  said  of  his  own,  "over  such  an  antagonist 
Avas  a  sufficient  humiliation."  Milton's  magnanimity  was 
no  match  for  his  irritation.  He  published  a  rejoinder 
to  Morus's  Fides  Publico,,  reiterating  his  belief  that  Morus 
was  author  of  the  Clamor,  but  that  it  was  no  matter 
whether  he  was  or  not,  since  by  publishing  the  book, 
and  furnishing  it  with  a  recommendatory  preface,  he  had 
made  it  his  own.  The  charges  against  Morus'  character 
he  reiterated,  and  strengthened  by  new  "  facts,"  which 
Morus's  enemies  had  hastened  to  contribute  to  the  budget 
of  calumny.  These  imputations  on  character,  mixed  with 
insinuations  of  unorthodoxy,  such  as  are  ever  rife  in 
clerical  controversy,  Milton  invests  with  the  moral  indig- 
nation of  a  prophet  denouncing  the  enemies  of  Jehovah. 
He  expends  a  wealth  of  vituperative  Latin  which  makes 
us  tremble,  till  we  remember  that  it  is  put  in  motion  to 
crush  an  insect. 

This  Pro  se  defensio  (Defence  for  himself),  appeared  in 
August,  1655.  Morus  met  it  by  a  supplementary  Fides 
Publica,  and  Milton,  resolved  to  have  the  last  word,  met 
him  by  a  Supplement  to  the  Defence.  The  reader  will  be 
glad  to  hear  that  this  is  the  end  of  the  Morus  controversy. 
We  leave  Milton's  victim  buried  under  the  mountains  of 
opprobrious  Latin  here  heaped  upon  him — this  "circum- 
foraneus  pharmacopola,  vanissimus  circulator,  propudi- 
nm  hominis  et  prostibulum." 


CHAPTER  XT. 


LATIN    SECRETARYSHIP    COMES     TO    AN     END — MILTOn's 

FRIENDS. 


It  is  no  part  of  Milton's  biography  to  relate  the  course  of 
public  events  in  these  momentous  years,  merely  because 
as  Latin  secretary  he  formulated  the  despatches  of  the 
Protector  or  of  his  Council,  and  because  these  Latin 
letters  are  incorporated  in  Milton's  works.  On  the 
course  of  affairs  Milton's  voice  had  no  influence,  as  he 
had  no  part  in  their  transaction.  Milton  was  the  last 
man  of  whom  a  practical  politician  would  have  sought 
advice.  He  knew  nothing  of  the  temper  of  the  nation, 
and  treated  all  that  opposed  his  own  view  with  supreme 
disdain.  On  the  other  hand,  idealist  though  he  was,  he 
does  not  move  in  the  sphere  of  speculative  politics,  or 
count  among  those  philosophic  names,  a  few  in  each 
century,  who  have  influenced,  not  action  but  thought. 
Accordingly  his  opinions  have  for  us  a  purely  personal 
interest.  They  are  part  of  the  character  of  the  poet 
Milton,  and  do  not  belong  to  either  world,  of  action  or 
of  mind. 

The  course  of  his  political  convictions  up  to  1654  has 
been  traced  in  our  narrative  thus  far.     His  breeding  at 


120  SECOND  PERIOD.     1610-1660.  [chap. 

home,  at  school,  at  college,  was  that  of  a  ruemher  of  the 
Established  Church,  but  of  the  Puritan  and  Calvinistic, 
not  of  the  Laudian  and  Arminian,  party  within  its  pale. 
By  1641,  we  find  that  his  Puritanism,  has  developed 
into  Presbyterianism ;  he  desires,  not  to  destroy  the 
Church,  hut  to  reform  it  by  abolishing  government  by 
bishops,  and  substituting  the  Scotch  or  Genevan  disci- 
pline. When  he  wrote  his  Reason  of  Church  Govern- 
ment (1642),  he  is  still  a  royalist;  not  in  the  cavalier 
sense  of  a  person  attached  to  the  reigning  sovereign,  or 
the  Stuart  family,  but  still  retaining  the  belief  of  his 
age  that  monarchy  in  the  abstract  had  somewhat  of  divine 
sanction.  Before  1649,  the  divine  right  of  monarchy, 
and  the  claim  of  Presbytery  to  be  scriptural,  have  yielded 
in  his  mind  to  a  wider  conception  of  the  rights  of  the  man 
and  the  Christian.  To  use  the  party  names  of  the  time, 
Milton  the  Presbyterian  has  expanded  into  Milton  the 
Independent.  There  is  to  be  no  State  Church,  and  in- 
stead of  a  monarchy  there  is  to  be  a  commonwealth. 
Very  soon  the  situation  developes  the  important  question 
how  this  commonwealth  shall  be  administered — whether 
by  a  representative  assembly,  or  by  a  picked  council,  or 
a  single  governor.  This  question  was  put  to  a  test  in  the 
Parliament  of  1654.  The  experiment  of  a  representative 
assembly,  begun  in  September  1654,  broke  down  in 
January  1655.  Before  it  was  tried  we  find  Milton  in  his 
Second  Defence,  in  May  1654,  recommending  Cromwell  to 
govern  not  by  a  Parliament,  but  by  a  council  of  officers ; 
i.  e.  ho  is  a  commonwealth's  man.  Arrived  at  this  point, 
would  Milton  take  his  stand  upon  doctrinaire  repub- 
licanism, and  lose  sight  of  liberty  in  the  attempt  to 
secure  equality,  as  his  friends  Vane,  Overton,  Bradshaw 
would  have  done  1   Or  would  his  idealist  exaltation  sweep 


xi.]  MILTON  AND  THE  COMMONWEALTH.  121 

him  on  into  some  one  of  the  current  fanaticisms,  Leveller, 
Fifth  Monarchy,  or  Muggletonian  1  Unpractical  as  he 
■was,  he  was  close  enough  to  State  affairs  as  Latin  Secre- 
tary, to  see  that  personal  government  hy  the  Protector 
was,  at  the  moment,  the  only  solution.  If  the  liberties 
that  had  been  conquered  hy  the  sword  were  to  he  main- 
tained, between  levelling  chaos  on  the  one  hand,  and 
royalist  reaction  on  the  other,  it  was  the  Protector  alone 
to  whom  those  who  prized  liberty  above  party  names 
could  look.  Accordingly  Milton  may  be  regarded  from 
the  year  1654  onwards  as  an  Oliverian,  though  with 
particular  reservations.  He  saw — it  was  impossible  for 
a  man  in  his  situation  not  to  see — the  unavoidable 
necessity  which  forced  Cromwell,  at  this  moment,  to 
undertake  to  govern  without  a  representative  assembly. 
The  political  necessity  of  the  situation  was  absolute,  and 
all  reasonable  men  who  were  embarked  in  the  cause  felt 
it  to  be  so. 

Through  all  these  stages  Milton  passed  in  the  space  of 
twenty  years — Church-Puritan,  Presbyterian,  Royalist, 
Independent,  Commonwealth's  man,  Oliverian.  These 
political  phases  were  not  the  acquiescence  of  a  placeman, 
or  indifferentist,  in  mutations  for  which  he  does  not  care ; 
still  less  were  they  changes  either  of  party  or  of  opinion. 
Whatever  he  thought,  Milton  thought  and  felt  intensely, 
and  expressed  emphatically ;  and  even  his  enemies  could 
not  accuse  him  of  a  shadow  of  inconsistency  or  wavering 
in  his  principles.  On  the  contrary,  tenacity,  or  persistence 
of  idea,  amounted  in  him  to  a  serious  defect  of  character. 
A  conviction  once  formed  dominated  him,  so  that,  as  in 
the  controversy  with  Morus,  he  could  not  be  persuaded 
that  he  had  made  a  mistake.  No  mind,  the  history  of 
which  we  have  an  opportunity  of  intimately  studying, 


122  SECOND  PERIOD.     1640— 16G0.  [chap. 

could  "be  more  of  one  piece  and  texture  than  was  that  of 
Milton  from  youth  to  age.     The  names,  which  we  are 
obliged  to  give  to  his  successive  political  stages,  do  not 
indicate   shades   of  colour  adopted  from  the  prevailing 
political   ground,    but  the  genuine  development   of  the 
public  consciousness  of  Puritan  England  repeated  in  an 
individual.     Milton  moved  forward,  not  "because  Cromwell 
and  the  rest  advanced,  but  with  Cromwell  and  the  rest. 
We  may  perhaps  describe  the  motive  force  as  a  passionate 
attachment  to  personal  liberty,  liberty  of  thought   and 
action.     This  ideal  force  working  in  the  minds  of  a  few, 
"  those  worthies  which  are  the  soul  of  that  enterprise " 
(Tenure  of  Kings),  had  been  the  mainspring  of  the  whole 
re  vol  ution .     The  Levellers,  Quakers,  Fifth.  Monarchy  men , 
and  the  wilder  Anabaptist  sects,  only  showed  the  work- 
ings of  the  same  idea  in  men,  whoso  intellects  had  not 
been  disciplined  by  education  or  experience.     The  idea  of 
liberty,  formulated  into  a  doctrine,  and  bowed  down  to  as 
a  holy  creed,  made  some  of  its  best  disciples,  such  as 
Harrison  and  Overton,  useless  at  the  most  critical  junc- 
ture.    The  party  of  anti-Oliverian  republicans,  the  In- 
transigentes,  became  one  of  the  greatest  difficulties  of  the 
Government.     Milton,  with  his  idealism,  his  thorough- 
ness, and  obstinate  persistence,  was  not  unlikely  to  have 
shipwrecked  upon  the  same  rock.     He  was  saved  by  his 
constancy  to  the  principle  of  religious  liberty,  which  was 
found    with    the    party  that    had   destroyed   the    King 
because  he  would  not  be  ruled  by  a  Parliament,  while  in 
1G55  it  supported  the  Protector  in  governing  without  a 
Parliament.     Supreme  authority  in  itself  was  not  Croni- 
av ell's  aim  ;   he  used  it  only  to  secure  the  fulfilment  of 
those  ideas  of  religious  liberty,  civil  order,  and  Protestant, 
ascendancy  in  Europe,  which  filled  his  whole  soul.     To 


xi.]  MILTON  AND  THE  COMMONWEALTH.  123 

Milton,  as  to  Cromwell,  forms,  ■whether  of  worship  or 
government,  were  hut  means  to  an  end,  and  were  to  he 
changed  whenever  expediency  might  require. 

In  1655,  then,  Milton  was  an  Oliverian,  hut  with 
reservations.  The  most  important  of  these  reservations 
regarded  the  relation  of  the  state  to  the  church.  Crom- 
well never  wholly  dropped  the  scheme  of  a  national 
church.  It  was,  indeed,  to  he  as  comprehensive  as  pos- 
sible ;  Episcopacy  was  pulled  down,  Presbytery  was  not 
set  up,  but  individual  ministers  might  he  Episcopalian  or 
Presbyterian  in  sentiment,  provided  they  satisfied  a  certain 
standard,  intelligible  enough  to  that  generation,  of  "  god- 
liness." Here  Milton  seems  to  have  remained  throughout 
upon  the  old  Independent  platform ;  he  will  not  have 
the  civil  power  step  over  its  limits  into  the  province  of 
religion  at  all.  Many  matters,  in  which  the  old  prelatic 
church  had  usurped  upon  the  domain  of  the  state,  should 
he  replaced  under  the  secular  authority.  But  the  spiritual 
region  was  matter  of  conscience,  and  not  of  external 
regulation. 

A  further  reservation  which  Milton  would  make  related 
to  endowments,  or  the  maintenance  of  ministers.  The 
Protectorate,  and  the  constitution  of  1657,  maintained  an 
established  clergy  in  the  enjoyment  of  tithes  or  other 
settled  stipends.  Nothing  was  more  abhorrent  to  Milton's 
sentiment  than  state  payment  in  religious  things.  The 
minister  who  receives  such  pay  "becomes  a  state  pensioner, 
"  a  hireling."  The  law  of  tithes  is  a  Jewish  law,  repealed 
by  the  Gospel,  under  which  the  minister  is  only  main- 
tained by  the  freewill  offerings  of  the  congregation  to 
which  he  ministers.  This  antipathy  to  hired  preachers 
was  one  of  Milton's  earliest  convictions.  It  thrusts  itself, 
rather  importunately,  into  Lycidas  (1636),  and  reappears 


124  SECOND  PERIOD.     1610— 1GG0.  [chap. 

in  the  Sonnet  to  Cromwell  (Sonnet  xvn.,  1652),  before  it  is 
dogmatically  expounded  in  the  pamphlet,  Considerations 
touching  means  to  remove  Hirelings  out  of  the  Cliurch 
(1G59).  Of  the  two  corruptions  of  the  church  by  the 
secular  power,  one  by  force,  the  other  by  pay,  Milton 
regards  the  last  as  the  most  dangerous.  "  Under  force, 
though  no  thank  to  the  forcers,  true  religion  ofttimes  best 
thrives  and  flourishes  ;  but  the  corruption  of  teachers, 
most  commonly  the  effect  of  hire,  is  the  very  bane  of 
truth  in  them  who  are  so  corrupted."  Nor  can  we  tax 
this  aversion  to  a  salaried  ministry,  with  being  a  mono- 
mania of  sect.  It  is  essentially  involved  in  the  conception 
of  religion  as  a  spiritual  state,  a  state  of  grace.  A  soul  in 
this  state  can  only  be  ministered  to  by  a  brother  in  a  like 
frame  of  mind.  To  assign  a  place  with  a  salary,  is  to  offer 
a  pecuniary  inducement  to  simulate  this  qualification. 
This  principle  may  be  wrong,  but  it  is  not  unreasonable. 
It  is  the  very  principle  on  which  the  England  of  our  day 
has  decided  against  the  endowment  of  science.  The 
endowment  of  the  church  was  to  Milton  the  poison  of 
religion,  and  in  so  thinking  he  was  but  true  to  his  con- 
ception of  religion.  Cromwell,  whatever  may  have  been 
his  speculative  opinions,  decided  in  favour  of  a  state 
endowment,  upon  the  reasons,  or  some  of  them,  which 
have  moved  modern  statesmen  to  maintain  church  esta- 
blishments. 

With  whatever  reservations,  Milton  was  an  Oliverian. 
Supporting  the  Protector's  policy,  he  admired  his  conduct, 
and  has  recorded  his  admiration  in  the  memorable  sonnet 
xii.  How  the  Protector  thought  of  Milton,  or  even 
that  he  knew  him  at  all,  there  remains  no  evidence. 
Napoleon  said  of  Corneille  that,  if  he  had  lived  in  his 
day,    he    would    have    made    him    his    first    minister. 


xi.]  MILTON  AND  THE  COMMONWEALTH.  125 

Milton's  ideas  were  not  such  as  could  have  value  in  the 
eyes  of  a  practical  statesman.  Yet  Cromwell  was  not 
always  taking  advice,  or  discussing  husiness.  He,  who 
could  take  a  liking  for  the  genuine  inwardness  of  the 
enthusiast  George  Fox,  might  have  heen  expected  to 
appreciate  equal  unworldliness,  joined  with  culture  and 
reading,  in  Milton.  "  If,"  says  Neal,  "  there  was  a  man 
in  England  who  excelled  hi  any  faculty  or  science,  the 
Protector  would  find  him  out  and  reward  him."  But  the 
excellence  which  the  Protector  prized  was  aptness  for 
public  employment,  and  this  was  the  very  quality  in 
which  Milton  was  deficient. 

The  poverty  of  Milton's  state  letters  has  been  often 
remarked.  Whenever  weighty  negotiations  are  going  on, 
other  pens  than  his  are  employed.  "We  may  ascribe  this 
to  his  blindness.  Milton  could  only  dictate,  and  there- 
fore everything  entrusted  to  him  must  pass  through  an 
amanuensis,  who  might  blab.  One  exception  to  the 
commonplace  character  of  the  state  papers  there  is.  The 
massacre  of  the  Yaudois  by  their  own  sovereign,  Charles 
Emanuel  II.,  Duke  of  Savoy,  excited  a  thrill  of  horror  in 
England  greater  than  the  massacres  of  Scio  or  of  Batak 
roused  in  our  time.  For  in  Savoy  it  was  not  humanity 
only  that  was  outraged,  it  was  a  deliberate  assault  of  the 
Papal  half  of  Europe  upon  an  outpost  of  the  Protestant 
cause. 

One  effect  of  the  Puritan  revolution  had  been  to 
alter  entirely  the  foreign  policy  of  England.  By  nature, 
by  geographical  position,  by  commercial  occupations, 
and  the  free  spirit  of  the  natives,  these  islands  were 
marked  out  to  be  members  of  the  northern  confederacy 
of  progressive  and  emancipated  Europe.  The  foreign 
policy  of   Elisabeth    had    been  steady  adhesion  to  this 


126  SECOND  PERIOD.     1610— 1GG0.  [chap. 

law  of  nature.  The  two  first  Stuarts,  coquetting 
with  semi-catholicism  at  home,  had  leaned  with  all  the 
weight  of  the  crown  and  of  government  towards  catholic 
connexions.  The  country  had  always  offered  a  vain  re- 
sistance ;  the  Parliament  of  1621  had  been  dismissed  for 
advising  James  to  join  the  continental  protestants  against 
Spain.  It  was  certain,  therefore,  that  when  the  govern- 
ment became  Puritan,  its  foreign  policy  would  again 
become  that  of  Elisabeth.  This  must  have  been  the  case 
even  if  Cromwell  had  not  been  there.  He  saw  not  only 
that  England  must  be  a  partner  in  the  general  protestant 
interest,  but  that  it  fell  to  England  to  make  the  com- 
bination and  to  lead  it.  He  acted  in  this  with  his  usual 
decision.  He  placed  England  in  her  natural  antagonism 
to  Spain  ;  he  made  peace  with  the  Dutch ;  he  courted 
the  friendship  of  the  Swiss  Cantons,  and  the  alliance  of 
the  Scandinavian  and  German  Princes  ;  and  to  France, 
which  had  a  divided  interest,  he  made  advantageous 
offers  provided  the  Cardinal  would  disconnect  himself 
from  the  ultramontane  party. 

lb  was  in  April  1655,  that  the  Vaudois  atrocities 
suddeuly  added  the  impulse  of  religious  sympathy  to  the 
permanent  gravitation  of  the  political  forces.  In  all 
catholic  countries  the  Jesuits  had  by  this  time  made 
themselves  masters  of  the  councils  of  the  princes.  The 
aim  of  Jesuit  policy  in  the  seventeenth  century  was  nothing 
less  than  the  entire  extirpation  of  protestantism,  and  pro- 
testants in  the  countries  which  they  ruled.  The  in- 
habitants of  certain  Piedmontese  valleys  had  held  from 
time  immemorial,  and  long  before  Luther,  tenets  and 
forms  of  worship  very  like  those  to  which  the  German 
reformers  had  sought  to  bring  back  the  church.  The 
Vaudois  were  wretchedly  poor,  and  had  been  incessantly 


xi.]  TIIE  MASSACRE  IN  PIEDMONT.  127 

the  objects  of  aggression  and  persecution.  In  January 
1655,  a  sudden  determination  was  taken  by  the  Turin 
government  to  make  them  conform  to  the  catholic  re- 
ligion by  force.  The  whole  of  the  inhabitants  of  three 
valleys  were  ordered  to  quit  the  country  within  three 
days,  under  pain  of  death  and  confiscation  of  goods,  unless 
they  would  become,  or  undertake  to  become,  catholic. 
They  sent  their  humble  remonstrances  to  the  court  of 
Turin  against  this  edict.     The  remonstrances  were  clis- 

O 

regarded,  and  military  execution  was  ordered.  On  April 
17,  1655,  the  soldiers,  recruits  from  all  countries — the 
Irish  are  specially  mentioned — were  let  loose  upon  the 
unarmed  population.  Murder  and  rape  and  burning 
are  the  ordinary  incidents  of  military  execution.  These 
were  not  enough  to  satisfy  the  ferocity  of  the  catholic 
soldiery,  who  revelled  for  many  days  in  the  infliction  of 
all  that  brutal  lust  or  savage  cruelty  can  suggest  to  men. 

It  was  nearly  a  month  before  the  news  reached  Eng- 
land. A  cry  of  horror  went  through  the  country,  and 
Cromwell  said  it  came  "as  near  his  heart  as  if  his  own 
nearest  and  dearest  had  been  concerned."  A  day  of  hu- 
miliation was  appointed,  large  collections  were  made  for 
the  sufferers,  and  a  special  envoy  was  despatched  to  re- 
monstrate with  the  Duke  of  Savoy.  Cardinal  Mazarin, 
however,  seeing  the  importance  which  the  Lord  Protector 
would  acquire  by  taking  the  lead  on  this  occasion,  stepped 
in,  and  patched  up  a  hasty  arrangement,  the  treaty  of 
Pignerol,  by  which  some  sort  of  fallacious  protection  was 
ostensibly  secured  to  the  survivors  of  the  massacre. 

All  the  despatches  in  this  business  were  composed  by 
Milton.  But  he  only  found  the  words  ;  especially  in  the 
letter  to  the  Duke  of  Savoy,  the  tone  of  which  is  much 
more  moderate  than  we  should  have  expected,  consider- 


128  SECOND  PEEIOD.     1G10-16G0.  [chap. 

ing  that  Blake  was  in  the  Mediterranean,  and  master  of 
the  coasts  of  the  Duke's  dominions.  It  is  impossible  to 
extract  from  these  letters  any  characteristic  trait,  unless 
it  is  from  the  speech  which  the  envoy,  Morland,  was  in- 
structed to  deliver  at  Turin,  in  which  it  is  said  that  all 
the  Neros  of  all  ages  had  never  contrived  inhumanities 
so  atrocious,  as  what  had  taken  place  in  the  Yaudois 
valleys.  Thus  restricted  in  his  official  communications, 
Milton  gave  vent  to  his  personal  feelings  on  the  occasion 
in  the  well-known  sonnet  (xvm.)  "Avenge,  0  Lord,  thy 
slaughtered  saints,  whose  hones  Lie  scattered  on  the  Alpine 
mountains  cold." 

It  has  been  already  said  that  there  remains  no  trace  of 
any  personal  intercourse  between  Milton  and  Cromwell. 
He  seems  to  have  remained  equally  unknown  to,  or  un- 
regarded by,  the  other  leading  men  in  the  Government  or 
the  Council.  It  is  vain  to  conjecture  the  cause  of  this 
general  neglect.  Some  have  found  it  in  the  coldness 
with  which  Milton  regarded,  parts  at  least  of,  the  policy 
of  the  Protectorate.  Others  refer  it  to  the  haughty  nature 
of  the  man,  who  will  neither  ask  a  favour,  nor  make  the 
first  advances  towards  intimacy.  This  last  supposition  is 
nearer  the  truth  than  the  former.  An  expression  he  uses 
in  a  private  letter  may  be  cited  in  its  support.  "Writing 
to  Peter  Heimbach  in  1G57,  to  excuse  himself  from  giving 
him  a  recommendation  to  the  English  ambassador  in 
Holland,  he  says  :  "I  am  sorry  that  I  am  not  able  to  do 
this ;  I  have  very  little  acquaintance  with  those  in  power, 
inasmuch  as  I  keep  very  much  to  my  own  house,  and 
prefer  to  do  so."  Something  may  also  bo  set  down  to 
the  character  of  the  Puritan  leaders,  alien  to  all  poetry, 
and  knowing  no  books  but  the  Bible. 

The  mental  isolation  in  which  the  great  poet  lived  his 


XI.]  MILTON  AND  HIS  FRIENDS.  129 

life,  is  a  remarkable  feature  of  his  "biography.     It  was  not 
only  after  the  Kestoration  that  he  appears  lonely  and 
friendless ;  it  was  much  the   same   during  the  previous 
period  of  the  Parliament  and  the  Protectorate.     Just  at 
one  time,  about  1641,  we  hear  from   our  best  authority, 
Phillips,  of  his  cultivating  the  society  of  men  of  his  own 
age,  and  "  keeping  a  gawdy-day,"  but  this  only  once  in 
three  weeks  or  a  month,  Avith  "  two  gentlemen  of  Gray's 
Inn."      He  had,  therefore,  known  what    it    was    to    be 
sociable.     But  the  general  tenour  of  his  life  was   other  ; 
proud,  reserved,  self-contained,  repellent ;  brooding  over 
his   own   ideas,  not  easily  admitting  into  his  mind  the 
ideas  of  others.     It  is  indeed   an  erroneous  estimate  of 
Milton  to  attribute  to  him  a  hard  or  austere  nature.     He 
had  all  the  quick  sensibility  which  belongs  to  the  poetic 
temperament,  and  longed  to  be  loved  that  he  might  love 
again.     But  he  had  to  pay  the  penalty  of  all  who  believe 
in  their  own  ideas,    in  that  their  ideas  come  between 
them  and  the  persons  that  approach  them,  and  constitute 
a  mental  barrier  which    can   only  be  broken  down  by 
sympathy.     And  sympathy  for  ideas  is  hard  to  find,  just 
in  proportion  as  those  ideas   are  profound,  far-reaching, 
the  fruit  of  long  study  and  meditation.     Hence  it  was 
that  Milton  did  not  associate  readily  with  his  contem- 
poraries, but  was  affable  and  instructive  in  conversation 
with  young  persons,  and  those  who  would  approach  him 
in  the  attitude  of  disciples.     His  daughter  Deborah,  who 
could  tell  so  little   about  him,  remembered  that  he  was 
delightful  company,  the  life  of  a  circle,  and  that  he  was 
so,  through  a  flow  of  subjects,  and  an  unaffected  cheerful- 
ness and  civility.     I  would  interpret  this  testimony,  the 
authenticity  of  which  is  indisputable,  of  his  demeanour 
with  the  young,  and  those  who  were  modest  enough  to 

K 


130  SECOND  PERIOD.     1G10— 16G0.  [chap. 

wait  upon  his  utterances.  His  isolation  from  his  coevals, 
and  from  those  who  offered  resistance,  was  the  necessary- 
consequence  of  his  force  of  character,  and  the  moral 
tenacity  which  endured  no  encroachment  on  the  narrow 
scheme  of  thought,  over  which  it  was  incessantly  brood- 
in". 

Though,  as  Johnson  says,  "his  literature  Avas  immense," 
there  was  no  humanity  in  it;  it  was  fitted  immovably 
into  a  scholastic  frame-work.  Hence  it  was  no  bond  of 
sympathy  between  him  and  other  men.  "We  find  him  in 
no  intimate  relation  with  any  of  the  contemporary  men  of 
learning,  poets,  or  wits.  From  such  of  them  as  were  of 
the  cavalier  party  he  was  estranged  by  politics.  That 
it  was  Milton's  interposition  which  saved  Davenant's 
life  in  1651,  even  were  the  story  better  authenticated 
than  it  is,  is  not  an  evidence  of  intimacy.  The  three 
men  most  eminent  for  learning  (in  the  usually  received 
sense  of  the  word)  in  England  at  that  day  were  Selden 
(d.  1654),  Gataker  (d.  1654),  and  Archbishop  Usher 
(d.  1656),  all  of  whom  were  to  be  found  in  London. 
With  none  of  the  three  is  there  any  trace  of  Milton  ever 
having  had  intercourse. 

It  is  probable,  but  not  certain,  that  it  was  at  Milton's 
intercession  that  the  Council  proposed  to  subsidise  Brian 
Walton  in  his  great  enterprise — the  Polyglott  Bible. 
This,  the  noblest  monument  of  the  learning  of  the  Anglican 
Church,  was  projected  and  executed  by  the  silenced 
clergy.  Fifteen  years  of  spoliation  and  humiliation  thus 
bore  richer  fruit  of  learning  than  the  two  centuries  of 
wealth  and  honour  which  have  since  elapsed.  As  Brian 
Walton  had,  at  one  time,  been  curate  of  Allhallows, 
Bread  Street,  Milton  may  have  known  him,  and  it  has 
been  inferred  that  by  T wells'  expression — "The  Council  of 


xi.]  MILTON  AND  HIS  FRIENDS.  131 

state,  before  whom  some,  having  relation  to  them,  brought 
tbis  business  " — Milton  is  meant. 

Not  with  John  Hales,  Cud  worth,  Whichcote,  Nicholas 
Bernard,  Meric  Casaubon,  nor  with  any  of  the  men  of 
letters  who  were  churchmen,  do  we  find  Milton  in  corre- 
spondence. The  interest  of  religion  was  more  powerful 
than  the  interest  of  knowledge  ;  and  the  author  of  Eikono- 
Mastes  must  bave  been  held  in  special  abhorrence  by  the 
loyal  clergy.  The  general  sentiment  of  this  party  is  ex- 
pressed in  Hacket's  tirade,  for  which  the  reader  is  referred 
to  his  Life  of  Archbishop  "Williams. 

From  Presbyterians,  such  as  Theophilus  Gale  or  Baxter, 
Milton  was  equally  separated  by  party.  Of  Hobbes, 
Milton's  widow  told  Aubrey  "that  he  was  not  of  his 
acquaintance  ;  that  her  husband  did  not  like  him  at  all, 
but  would  acknowledge  him  to  be  a  man  of  great  parts." 

Owing  to  these  circumstances,  the  circle  of  Milton's 
intimates  contains  few,  and  those  undistinguished  names. 
One  exception  there  was.  In  Andrew  Marvel  Milton 
found  one  congenial  spirit,  incorruptible  amid  poverty, 
unbowed  by  defeat.  Marvel  was  twelve  years  Milton's 
junior,  and  a  Cambridge  man  (Trinity),  like  himself.  He 
had  had  better  training  still,  having  been  for  two  years 
an  inmate  of  Nunappleton,  in  the  capacity  of  instructor 
to  Mary,  only  daughter  of  the  great  Lord  Fairfax.  In 
1652,  Milton  had  recommended  Marvel  for  the  appoint- 
ment of  assistant  secretary  to  himself,  now  that  he  was 
partially  disabled  by  his  blindness.  The  recommendation 
was  not  effectual  at  the  time,  another  man,  Philip  Mea- 
dows, obtaining  the  post.  It  was  not  till  1657,  when 
Meadows  was  sent  on  a  mission  to  Denmark,  that  Marvel 
became  Milton's  colleague.  He  remained  attached  to  him 
to  the  last.     It  were  to  be  wished  that  he  had  left  some 

K  2 


132  SECOND  PERIOD.     1640—1660.  [chap. 

reminiscences  of  his  intercourse  with  the  poet  in  his  later 
years,  some  authentic  notice  of  him  in  his  prose  letters, 
instead  of  a  copy  of  verses,  which  attest,  at  least,  his 
affectionate  admiration  for  Milton's  great  epic,  though 
they  are  a  poor  specimen  of  his  own  poetical  efforts. 

Of  Marchmont  Keedham,  and  Samuel  Hartlib  mention 
has  been  already  made.  Daring  the  eight  years  of  his 
sojourn  in  the  house  in  Petty  France,  "  he  was  frequently 
visited  by  persons  of  quality,"  says  Phillips.  The  only 
name  he  gives  is  Lady  Eanelagh.  This  lady,  by  birth  a 
Boyle,  sister  of  Eobert  Boyle,  had  placed  first  her  nephew, 
and  then  her  son,  under  Milton's  tuition.  Of  an  excel- 
lent understanding,  and  liberally  cultivated,  she  sought 
Milton's  society,  and  as  he  could  not  go  to  visit  her, 
she  went  to  him.  There  are  no  letters  of  Milton  addressed 
to  her,  but  he  mentions  her  once  as  "a  most  superior 
woman,"  and  when,  in  1G56,  she  left  London  for  Ireland, 
he  "  grieves  for  the  loss  of  the  one  acquaintance  which 
was  worth  to  him  all  the  rest."  These  names,  with  that 
of  Dr.  Paget,  exhaust  the  scanty  list  of  Milton's  intimates 
during  this  period. 

To  these  older  friends,  however,  must  be  added  his 
former  pupils,  now  become  men,  but  remaining  ever 
attached  to  their  old  tutor,  seeing  him  often  when  in 
London,  and  when  absent  corresponding  with  him.  "With 
them  he  was  "  affable  and  instructive  in  conversation." 
Henry  Lawrence,  son  of  the  President  of  Oliver's  Council, 
and  Cyriac  Skinner,  grandson  of  Chief  Justice  Coke,  were 
special  favourites.  With  these  he  would  sometimes  "  by 
the  fire  help  waste  a  sullen  day ;"  and  it  was  these  two 
who  called  forth  from  him  the  only  utterances  of  this 
time  which  are  not  solemn,  serious,  or  sad.  Sonnet  xvi 
is  a  poetical  invitation  to  Henry  Lawrence,  "  of  virtuous 


xi.]  MILTON  AND  HIS  FRIENDS.  133 

father  virtuous  son,"  to  a  "  neat  repast,"  not  without  wine 
and  song,  to  cheer  the  winter  season.  Besides  these  two, 
whose  names  are  familiar  to  us  through  the  Sonnets,  there 
was  Lady  Eanelagh's  son,  Eichard  Jones,  who  went,  in 
1656,  to  Oxford,  attended  hy  his  tutor,  the  German 
Heinrich  Oldenhurg.  We  have  two  letters  (Latin) 
addressed  to  Jones  at  Oxford,  which  are  curious  as  show- 
ing that  Milton  was  as  dissatisfied  with  that  university 
even  after  the  reform,  with  Oliver  Chancellor,  and  Owen 
Vice-Chancellor,  as  he  had  heen  with  Camhriclge. 

His  two  nephews,  also  his  pupils,  must  have  ceased  at 
a  very  early  period  to  he  acceptahle  either  as  friends  or 
companions.  They  had  "both — hut  the  younger  hrother, 
John,  more  decidedly  than  Edward — passed  into  the 
opposite  camp.  This  is  a  result  of  the  uncle's  strict  system 
of  Puritan  discipline,  which  will  surprise  no  one  who  has 
ohserved  that,  in  education,  mind  reacts  against  the  pres- 
sure of  will.  The  teacher  who  seeks  to  impose  his  views 
raises  antagonists,  and  not  disciples.  The  generation  of 
young  men  who  grew  up  under  the  Commonwealth  were 
in  intellectual  revolt  against  the  constraint  of  Puritanism, 
hefore  they  proceeded  to  political  revolution  against  its 
authority.  Long  hefore  the  reaction  emhodied  itself  in 
the  political  fact  of  the  Restoration,  it  had  manifested 
itself  in  popular  literature.  The  theatres  were  still  closed 
hy  the  police,  hut  Davenant  found  a  puhlic  in  London  to 
applaud  an  "entertainment  hy  declamations  and  music, 
after  the  manner  of  the  ancients"  (1656).  The  press 
"began  timidly  to  venture  on  hooks  of  amusement,  in  a 
style  of  humour  which  seemed  rihald  and  heathenish  to 
the  staid  and  soher  covenanter.  Something  of  the  jollity 
and  merriment  of  old  Elisabethan  days  seemed  to  he  in 
the  air.     But  with  a  vast  difference.     Instead  of  "  dally- 


13 1  SECOND  PERIOD.    1640— 16C0.  [chap. 

ing  with  the  innocence  of  love,"  as  in  England's  Helicon 
(1G00),  or  The  Passionate  Pilgrim,  the  sentiment,  crushed 
and  maimed  by  unwise  repression,  found  a  less  honest  and 
less  refined  expression.  The  strongest  and  most  universal 
of  human  passions  when  allowed  freedom,  light,  and  air, 
becomes  poetic  inspiration.  The  same  passion  coerced  by 
police  is  but  driven  underground. 

So  it  came  to  pass  that,  in  these  years,  the  Protector's 
Council  of  state  was  much  exercised  by  attempts  of  the 
London  press  to  supply  the  public,  weary  of  sermons, 
with  some  light  literature  of  the  class  now  (1879) 
known  as  facetious.  On  April  25,  1656,  the  august  body 
which  had  upon  its  hands  the  government  of  three  king- 
doms and  the  protection  of  the  protestant  interest  mili- 
tant throughout  Europe,  could  find  nothing  better  to  do 
than  to  take  into  consideration  a  book  entitled  Sportive 
Wit,  or  The  Muse's  Merriment.  Sad  to  relate,  the  book 
was  found  to  contain  "  much  lascivious  and  profane 
matter."  And  the  editor?— no  other  than  John  Phillips, 
Milton's  youngest  nephew  !  It  is  as  if  nature,  in  reassert- 
ing herself,  had  made  deliberate  selection  of  its  agent. 
The  pure  poet  of  Comus,  the  man  who  had  publicly 
boasted  his  chastity,  had  trained  up  a  pupil  to  become 
the  editor  of  an  immodest  drollery  !  Another  and  more 
original  production  of  John  Phillips,  the  Satyr  against 
Hypocrites,  was  an  open  attack,  with  mixed  banter  and 
serious  indignation,  on  the  established  religion.  "It 
affords,"  says  Godwin,  "  unequivocal  indication  of  the 
company  now  kept  by  the  author  with  cavaliers,  and  bon 
vivans,  and  demireps,  and  men  of  ruined  fortunes." 
Edward  Phillips,  the  elder  brother,  followed  suit  with  the 
Mysteries  of  Love  and  Eloquence  (1658),  a  book,  accord- 
ing to  Godwin,  "  entitled  to  no  insignificant  rank  among 


xi.]  HIS  REPUTATION  WITH  FOREIGNERS.  135 

the  multifarious  productions  issued  from  the  press,  to 
debauch  the  manners  of  the  nation,  and  to  bring  back  the 
King."  Truly,  a  man's  worst  vexations  come  to  him  from 
his  own  relations.  Milton  had  the  double  annoyance  of 
the  public  exposure  before  the  Council  of  State,  and  the 
private  reflection  on  the  failure  of  his  own  system  of 
education. 

The  homage  which  was  wanting  to  the  prophet  in  his 
own  country  was  more  liberally  tendered  by  foreigners. 
Milton,  it  must  be  remembered,  was  yet  only  known  in 
England  as  the  pamphleteer  of  strong  republican,  but 
somewhat  eccentric,  opinions.  On  the  continent  he  was 
the  answerer  of  Salmasius,  the  vindicator  of  liberty 
against  despotic  power.  "  Learned  foreigners  of  note," 
Phillips  tells  us,  "  could  not  part  out  of  this  city  without 
giving  a  visit "  to  his  uncle.  A  ubrey  even  exaggerates 
this  flocking  of  the  curious,  so  far  as  to  say  that  some 
came  over  into  England  only  to  see  Oliver  Protector  and 
John  Milton.  That  Milton  had  more  than  he  liked  of 
these  sightseers,  who  came  to  look  at  him  when  he  could 
not  see  them,  we  can  easily  believe.  Such  visitors  would 
of  course  be  from  protestant  countries.  Italians,  though 
admiring  his  elegant  Latin,  had  "disliked  him  on  account 
of  his  too  severe  morals."  A  glimpse,  and  no  more  than 
a  glimpse,  of  the  impression  such  visitors  could  carry 
away,  we  obtain  in  a  letter  written,  in  1G51,  by  a  Nurem- 
berg pastor,  Christoph  Arnold,  to  a  friend  at  home  : — 
"  The  strenuous  defender  of  the  new  regime,  Milton,  enters 
readily  into  conversation  ;  his  speech  is  pure,  his  written 
style  very  pregnant.  He  has  committed  himself  to  a 
harsh,  not  to  say  unjust,  criticism  of  the  old  English 
divines,  and  of  their  Scripture  commentaries,  which  are 
truly  learned,  be  witness  the  genius  of  learning  himself  !  " 


138  SECOND  PERIOD.    1G10-1GG0.  [cuap. 

It  must  not  be  supposed  from  this  that  Milton  had  dis- 
coursed with  Arnold  on  the  English  divines.  The  allusion 
is  to  that  onfall  upon  the  reformers,  Cranmer,  Latimer,  &c, 
which  had  escaped  from  Milton's  pen  in  1642  to  the  great 
grief  of  his  friends.  If  the  information  of  a  dissenting 
minister,  one  Thomas  Bradbury,  who  professed  to  derive 
it  from  Jeremiah  White,  one  of  Oliver's  chaplains, 
may  be  trusted,  Milton  "  was  allowed  by  the  Parliament 
a  weekly  table  for  the  entertainment  of  foreign  minis- 
ters and  persons  of  learning,  such  especially  as  came 
from  protestant  states,  which  allowance  was  also  con- 
tinued by  Cromwell." 

Such  homage,  though  it  may  be  a  little  tiresome,  may 
have  gratified  for  the  moment  the  political  writer,  but  it 
would  not  satisfy  the  poet  who  was  dreaming  of  an 
immortality  of  far  other  fame — 

Two  equal'd  with  me  in  fate, 

So  were  I  equal'd  with  them  in  renown. 

And  to  one  with  Milton's  acute  sensibility,  yearning  for 
sympathy  and  love,  dependent,  through  his  calamity,  on 
the  eyes,  as  on  the  heart,  of  others,  his  domestic  interior 
was  of  more  consequence  than  outside  demonstrations 
of  respect.  Four  years  after  the  death  of  his  first 
wife  he  married  again.  We  know  nothing  more  of  this 
second  wife,  Catharine  Woodcock,  than  what  may  be 
gathered  from  the  Sonnet  xis.  in  which  he  comme- 
morated his  "  late  espoused  saint,"  in  whose  person  "  love, 
sweetness,  goodness  shin'd."  After  only  fifteen  months 
union  she  died  (1658),  after  having  given  birth  to  a 
daughter,  who  lived  only  a  few  months.  Milton  was 
again  alone. 

His  public  functions  as  Latin  Secretary  had  been  con- 


xi.]  DEATH  OF  CROMWELL.  137 

tracted  within  narrow  limits  by  his  blindness.  The 
heavier  part  of  the  duties  had  been  transferred  to  others, 
first  to  Weckherlin,  then  to  Philip  Meadows,  and  lastly 
to  Andrew  Marvel.  The  more  confidential  diplomacy 
Thurloe  reserved  for  his  own  cabinet.  But  Milton  con- 
tinued up  to  the  last  to  be  occasionally  called  upon  for  a 
Latin  epistle.  On  September  3,  1658,  passed  away  the  mas- 
ter-mind which  had  hitherto  compelled  the  jarring  elements 
in  the  nation  to  co- exist  together,  and  chaos  was  let  loose. 
Milton  retained  and  exercised  his  secretaryship  under 
Eichard  Protector,  and  even  under  the  restored  Parlia- 
ment. His  latest  Latin  letter  is  of  date  May  16,  1659. 
He  is  entirely  outside  all  the  combinations  and  complica- 
tions which  filled  the  latter  half  of  that  year,  after 
Richard's  retirement  in  May.  It  is  little  use  writing  to 
foreign  potentates  now,  for,  with  one  man's  life,  England 
has  fallen  from  her  lead  in  Europe,  and  is  gravitating 
towards  the  catholic  and  reactionary  powers,  Prance  or 
Spain.  Milton,  though  he  knows  nothing  more  than  one 
of  the  public,  "  only  what  it  appears  to  us  without  doors," 
he  says,  will  yet  write  about  it.  The  habit  of  pam- 
phleteering was  on  him,  and  he  will  write  what  no  one 
will  care  to  read.  The  stiff-necked  commonwealth  men, 
with  their  doctrinaire  republicanism,  were  standing  out 
for  their  constitutional  ideas,  blind  to  the  fact  that  the 
royalists  were  all  the  while  undermining  the  ground 
beneath  the  feet  alike  of  Presbyterian  and  Independent, 
Parliament  and  army.  The  Greeks  of  Constantinople 
denouncing  the  Azymite,  when  Mohammed  II.  was  forming 
his  lines  round  the  doomed  city,  were  not  more  infatuated 
than  these  pedantic  commonwealth  men  with  their  parlia- 
mentarianism  when  Charles  II.  was  at  Calais. 

Not  less  inopportune  than  the  public  men  of  the  party, 


133  SECOND  PERIOD.    1640—1660.  [chap. 

Milton  chooses  this  time  for  inculcating  his  views  on 
endowments.  A  fury  of  utterance  was  upon  him,  and  he 
poured  out,  during  the  death-throes  of  the  republic,  pam- 
phlet upon  pamphlet,  as  fast  as  he  could  get  them  written 
to  his  dictation.  These  extemporised  effusions  hetray  in 
their  style,  hurry  and  confusion,  the  restlessness  of  a 
coming  despair.  The  passionate  enthusiasm  of  the  early 
tracts  is  gone,  and  all  the  old  faults,  the  obscurity,  the 
inconsecutiveness,  the  want  of  arrangement,  are  ex- 
aggerated. In  the  Ready  Way  there  is  a  monster  sen- 
tence of  thirty-nine  lines,  containing  336  words.  Though 
his  instincts  were  perturhed,  he  was  unaware  what  turn 
things  were  taking.  In  Fehruary  1660,  when  all  persons 
of  ordinary  information  saw  that  the  restoration  of 
monarchy  was  certain,  Milton  knew  it  not,  and  put  out  a 
tract  to  show  his  countrymen  a  Ready  and  easy  loay  to 
establish  a  free  Commonwealth.  "With  the  same  perti- 
nacity with  which  he  had  adhered  to  his  own  assumption 
that  Morus  was  author  of  the  Clamor,  he  now  refused  to 
believe  in  the  return  of  the  Stuarts.  Fast  as  his  pen 
moved,  events  outstripped  it,  and  he  has  to  rewrite  the 
Ready  and  easy  way  to  suit  their  march.  The  second 
edition  is  overtaken  hy  the  Eestoration,  and  it  should 
seem  was  never  circulated.  Milton  will  ever  "give 
advice  to  Sylla,"  and  writes  a  letter  of  admonition  to 
Monk,  which,  however,  never  reached  either  the  press  or 
Sylla. 

The  month  of  May  1660,  put  a  forced  end  to  his 
illusion.  Before  the  29th  of  that  month  he  had  fled  from 
the  house  in  Petty  France,  and  heen  sheltered  hy  a  friend 
in  the  city.  In  this  friend's  house,  in  Bartholomew 
Close,  he  lay  concealed  till  the  passing  of  the  Act  of 
Oblivion,  29th  August.     Phillips  says  that  he  owed  his 


xi.]  THE  RESTORATION.  139 

exemption  from  the  vengeance  which  overtook  so  many 
of  his  friends,  to  Andrew  Marvel,  "  who  acted  vigorously 
in  his  behalf,  and  made  a  considerable  party  for  him."  But 
in  adding  that  "he was  so  far  excepted  as  not  to  bear  any 
office  in  the  commonwealth,"  Phillips  is  in  error. 
Milton's  name  does  not  occur  in  the  Act.  Pope  used  to 
tell  that  Davenant  had  employed  his  interest  to  protect  a 
brother-poet,  thus  returning  a  similar  act  of  generosity 
done  to  himself  by  Milton  in  1650.  Pope  had  this  story 
from  Betterton  the  actor.  How  far  Davenant  exaggerated 
to  Betterton  his  own  influence  or  his  exertions,  we  cannot 
tell.  Another  account  assigns  the  credit  of  the  interven- 
tion to  Secretary  Morris  and  Sir  Thomas  Clarges.  After 
all,  it  is  probable  that  he  owed  his  immunity  to  his  insig- 
nificance and  his  harmlessness.  The  formality  of  burning 
two  of  his  books  by  the  hands  of  the  hangman  was  gone 
through.  He  was  also  for  some  time  during  the  autumn 
of  1660  in  the  custody  of  the  serjeant-at-arms,  for  on 
15th  December,  there  is  an  entry  in  the  Commons 
journals  ordering  his  discharge.  It  is  characteristic  of 
Milton  that,  even  in  this  moment  of  peril,  he  stood  up 
for  his  rights,  and  refused  to  pay  an  overcharge,  which  the 
official  thought  he  might  safely  exact  from  a  rebel  and  a 
covenanter. 


THIRD  PERIOD.     16G0— 1674. 
CHAPTER  XII. 

BIOGRAPHICAL. — LITERARY    OCCUPATION.  — RELIGIOUS 

OPINIONS. 

Revolutions  are  of  two  kinds ;  they  are  either  progressive 
or  reactionary.  A  revolution  of  progress  is  often  destruc- 
tive, sweeping  away  much  which  should  have  heen  pre- 
served. But  such  a  revolution  has  a  regenerating  force  ; 
it  renews  the  youth  of  a  nation,  and  gives  free  play  to  its 
vital  powers.  Lost  limbs  are  replaced  by  new.  A  revolu- 
tion of  reaction,  on  the  other  hand,  is  a  benumbing  influ- 
ence, paralysing  effort,  and  levelling  character.  In  such  a 
conservative  revolution  the  mean,  the  selfish,  and  the 
corrupt  come  to  the  top ;  man  seeks  ease  and  enjoyment 
rather  than  duty ;  virtue,  honour,  patriotism,  and  dis- 
interestedness disappear  altogether  from  a  society  which 
has  ceased  to  believe  in  them. 

The  Restoration  of  1660  was  such  a  revolution.  Com- 
plete and  instantaneous  inversion  of  the  position  of  the  two 
parties  in  the  nation,  it  occasioned  much  individual  hard- 
ship. But  this  was  only  the  fortune  of  war,  the  necessary 
consequence  of  party  ascendancy.  The  Restoration  was 
much  more  than  a  triumph  of  the  party  of  the  royalists 
over  that  of  the  roundheads ;  it  was  the  deathblow  to 


ch.  xii.]  EFFECTS  OF  THE  RESTORATION.  141 

national  aspiration,  to  all  those  aims  which  raise  man 
ahove  himself.  It  destroyed  and  trampled  under  foot 
his  ideal.  The  Restoration  was  a  moral  catastrophe.  It 
was  not  that  there  wanted  good  men  among  the  church- 
men, men  as  pious  and  virtuous  as  the  Puritans  whom 
they  displaced.  But  the  royalists  came  hack  as  the  party 
of  reaction,  reaction  of  the  spirit  of  the  world  against 
asceticism,  of  self-indulgence  against  duty,  of  materialism 
against  idealism.  For  a  time  virtue  was  a  public  laugh- 
ing-stock, and  the  word  "  saint,"  the  highest  expression 
in  the  language  for  moral  perfection,  connoted  everything 
that  was  ridiculous.  I  do  not  speak  of  the  gallantries  of 
"Whitehall,  which  figure  so  prominently  in  the  histories  of 
the  reign.  Far  too  much  is  made  of  these,  when  they  are 
made  the  scapegoat  of  the  moralist.  The  style  of  court 
manners  was  a  mere  incident  on  the  surface  of  social  life. 
The  national  life  was  more  profoundly  tainted  hy  the 
discouragement  of  all  good  men,  which  penetrated  every 
shire  and  every  parish,  than  hy  the  distant  reports  of  the 
loose  behaviour  of  Charles  II.  Servility,  meanness, 
venality,  time-serving,  and  a  dishelief  in  virtue  diffused 
themselves  over  the  nation  like  a  pestilential  miasma,  the 
depressing  influence  of  which  was  heavy,  even  upon  those 
souls  which  individually  resisted  the  poison.  The  heroic 
age  of  England  had  passed  away,  not  hy  gradual  decay, 
hy  imperceptible  degeneration,  hut  in  a  year,  in  a  single 
day,  like  the  winter's  snow  in  Greece.  It  is  for  the 
historian  to  describe,  and  unfold  the  sources  of  this  con- 
tagion. The  "biographer  of  Milton  has  to  take  note  of  the 
political  change  only  as  it  affected  the  worldly  circum- 
stances of  the  man,  the  spiritual  environment  of  the 
poet,  and  the  springs  of  his  inspiration. 

The  consequences  of  the  Restoration  to  Milton's  worldly 


142  THIRD  PERIOD.    16G0— 1674.  [chap. 

fortunes  were  disastrous.     As  a  partisan  he  was  necessarily 
involved  in  the  ruin  of  his  party.     As  a  matter  of  course 
he  lost  his  Latin  secretaryship.     There  is  a  story  that  he 
was  offered  to  he  continued  in  it,  and  that  when  urged  to 
accept  the  offer  hy  his  wife,  he  replied,  "  Thou  art  in  the 
right ;  you,  as  other  women,  would  ride  in  your  coach ;  for 
me,  my  aim  is  to  live  and  die  an  honest  man."     This  tradi- 
tion, handed  on  by  Pope,  is  of  doubtful  authenticity.     It 
is  not  probable  that  the  man  who  had  printed  of  Charles  I. 
what  Milton  had  printed,  could  have  been  offered  office 
under  Charles  II.      Even  were  court  favour  to  be  pur- 
chased by  concessions,  Milton  was  not  the  man  to  make 
them,   or  to   belie   his  own   antecedents,  as    Marchmont 
Xeedham,  Dry  den,  and  so  many  others  did.     Our  wish 
for  Milton  is  that  he  should  have  placed  himself  from  the 
beginning  above  party.     But  he  had  chosen  to  be  the 
champion  of  a  party,  and  he  loyally  accepted  the  conse- 
quences.    He  escaped  with    life    and    liberty.     The    re- 
action, though  barbarous  in  its  treatment  of  its  victims, 
was  not  bloodthirsty.     Milton  was  already  punished  by 
the  loss  of  his  sight,  and  he  was  now  mulcted  in  three- 
fourths  of  his  small  fortune.     A  sum  of  2000Z.  which 
he  had  placed  in  government   securities   was   lost,    the 
restored  monarchy  refusing  to  recognise  the  obligations 
of  the  protectorate.     He  lost  another  like  sum  by  mis- 
management, and  for  want  of  good  advice,  says  Phillips, 
or  according  to  his   dranddaughter's  statement,   by  the 
dishonesty  of  a  money-scrivener.    He  had  also  to  give  up, 
Avithout  compensation,  some  property,  valued  at  GO/,  a 
year,  which  he  had   purchased  Avhen  the  estates  of  the 
Chapter  of  Westminster  were  sold.     In  the  great  fire, 
1GGG,   his  house  in   Bread-street  was   destroyed.     Thus, 
from  easy  circumstances,  he  was  reduced,  if  not  to  desti- 
tution, at  least  to  narrow  means.     He  left  at  his  death 


xii.]  EFFECTS  OF  THE  RESTORATION.  143 

1-500?.,  which  Phillips  calls  a  considerable  sum.  And  if 
he  sold  his  books,  one  by  one,  during  his  lifetime,  this 
was  because,  knowing  their  value,  he  thought  he  could 
dispose  of  them  to  greater  advantage  than  his  wife  would 
be  able  to  do. 

But  far  outweighing  such  considerations  as  pecuniary 
ruin,  and  personal  discomfort,  was  the  shock  which  the 
moral  nature  felt  from  the  irretrievable  discomfiture  of  all 
the  hopes,  aims,  and  aspirations  which  had  hitherto  sus- 
tained and  nourished  his  soul.  In  a  few  months  the 
labour  of  twenty  years  was  swept  away  without  a  trace  of 
it  being  left.  It  was  not  merely  a  political  defeat  of  his 
party,  it  was  the  total  wreck  of  the  principles,  of  the  social 
and  religious  ideal,  with  which  Milton's  life  was  bound  up. 
Others,  whose  convictions  only  had  been  engaged  in  the 
cause,  could  hasten  to  accommodate  themselves  to  the  new 
era,  or  even  to  transfer  then:  services  to  the  conqueror. 
But  such  flighty  allegiance  was  not  possible  for  Milton, 
who  had  embarked  in  the  Puritan  cause  not  only  intel- 
lectual convictions,  but  all  the  generosity  and  ardour  of 
his  passionate  nature.  "  I  conceive  myself  to  be,"  he  had 
written  in  1642,  "  not  as  mine  own  person,  but  as  a  mem- 
ber incorporate  into  that  truth  whereof  I  was  persuaded, 
and  whereof  I  had  declared  myself  openly  to  be  the  par- 
taker." It  was  now  in  the  moment  of  overthrow  that 
Milton  became  truly  great.  "  Wandellos  im  ewigen  Euin," 
he  stood  alone,  and  became  the  party  himself.  He  took 
the  only  course  open  to  him,  turned  away  his  thoughts 
from  the  political  disaster,  and  directed  the  fierce  enthu- 
siasm which  burned  within,  upon  an  absorbing  poetic  task. 
His  outward  hopes  were  blasted,  and  he  returned  with 
concentrated  ardour  to  woo  the  muse,  from  whom  he  had 
so  long  truanted.  The  passion  which  seethes  beneath  the 
stately  march  of  the  verse  in  Paradise  Lost,  is  not  the 


144  THIRD  PERIOD.    1660—1671.  [chap. 

hopeless  moan  of  despair,  but  the  intensified  fanaticism 
which  defies  misfortune  to  make  it  "  bate  one  jot  of  heart 
or  hope."  The  grand  loneliness  of  Milton  after  1G68,  "is 
reflected  in  his  three  great  poems  by  a  sublime  indepen- 
dence of  human  sympathy,  like  that  with  which  mountains 
fascinate  and  rebuff  us  "{Lowell). 

Late  then,  but  not  too  late,  Milton,  at  the  age  of  fifty- 
two,  fell  back  upon  the  rich  resources  of  his  own  mind,  upon 
poetical  composition,  and  the  study  of  good  books,  which 
he  always  asserted  to  be  necessary  to  nourish  and  sustain 
a  poet's  imagination.  Here  he  had  to  contend  with  the 
enormous  difficulty  of  blindness.  He  engaged  a  kind  of 
attendant  to  read  to  him.  But  this  only  sufficed  for 
English  books — imperfectly  even  for  these — and  the  greater 
part  of  the  choice,  not  extensive,  library  upon  which 
Milton  drew,  was  Hebrew,  Greek,  Latin,  and  the  modern 
languages  of  Europe.  In  a  letter  to  Heimbach,  of  date 
1G66,  he  complains  pathetically  of  the  misery  of  having 
to  spell  out,  letter  by  letter,  the  Latin  words  of  the  epistle, 
to  the  attendant  who  was  writing  to  his  dictation.  At 
last  he  fell  upon  the  plan  of  engaging  young  friends,  who 
occasionally  visited  him,  to  read  to  him  and  to  write  for 
him.  In  the  precious  volume  of  Milton  MSS.  preserved 
in  the  library  of  Trinity  College,  Cambridge,  six  different 
hands  have  been  distinguished.  "Who  they  were  is  not 
always  known.  But  Phillips  tells  us  that,  "  he  had  daily 
about  him  one  or  other  to  read  to  him ;  some  persons  of 
man's  estate,  who  of  their  own  accord  greedily  catch'd  at 
the  opportunity  of  being  his  reader,  that  they  might  as 
well  reap  the  benefit  of  what  they  read  to  him,  as  oblige 
him  by  the  benefit  of  their  reading ;  others  of  younger 
years  sent  by  their  parents  to  the  same  end."  Edward 
Phillips  himself,  who  visited  his  uncle  to  the  last,  may 


xir.]  HIS  THIRD  MARRIAGE.  145 

have  been  among  the  number,  as  much  as  his  own  engage- 
ments as  tutor,  first  to  the  only  son  of  John  Evelyn,  then 
in  the  family  of  the  Earl  of  Pembroke,  and  finally  to  tho 
Bennets,  Lord  Arlington's  children,  would  permit  him. 
Others  of  these  casual  readers  were  Samuel  Barrow,  body 
physician  to  Charles  II.,  and  Cyriac  Skinner,  of  whom 
mention  has  been  already  made  (above,  p.  132). 

To  a  blind  man,  left  with  three  little  girls,  of  whom  the 
youngest  was  only  eight  at  the  Restoration,  marriage 
seemed  equally  necessary  for  their  sake  as  for  his  own. 
Milton  consulted  his  judicious  friend  and  medical  adviser, 
Dr.  Paget,  who  recommended  to  him  Elizabeth  Minshull, 
of  a  family  of  respectable  position  near  Nantwich,  in 
Cheshire.  She  was  some  distant  relation  of  Paget,  who 
must  have  felt  the  terrible  responsibility  of  undertaking  to 
recommend.  She  justified  his  selection.  The  marriage 
took  place  in  Eebruary  1663,  and  during  the  remaining 
eleven  years  of  his  life,  the  poet  was  surrounded  by  the 
thoughtful  attentions  of  an  active  and  capable  woman. 
There  is  but  scanty  evidence  as  to  what  she  was  like, 
either  in  person  or  character.  Aubrey,  who  knew  her, 
says  she  was  "  a  gent.  (?  genteel)  person,  (of)  a  peaceful 
and  agreeable  humour."  Newton,  Bishop  of  Bristol,  who 
wrote  in  1749,  had  heard  that  she  was  "  a  woman  of  a  most 
violent  spirit,  and  a  hard  mother-in-law  to  his  children." 
It  is  certain  that  she  regarded  her  husband  with  great 
veneration,  and  studied  his  comfort.  Mary  Eisher,  a  maid- 
servant in  the  house,  deposed  that  at  the  end  of  his  life, 
when  he  was  sick  and  infirm,  his  wife  having  provided 
something  for  dinner  she  thought  he  would  like,  he  "  spake 
to  his  said  wife  these  or  like  words,  as  near  as  this  de- 
ponent can  remember  :  '  God  have  mercy,  Betty,  I  see 
thou  wilt  perform  according  to  thy  promise,  in  providing 

h 


146  THIRD  PEEIOD.    1660-1674.  [chap. 

me  such  dishes  as  I  think  fit  while  I  live,  and  when  I  die 
thou  knowest  I  have  left  thee  all.'  "  There  is  no  evidence 
that  his  wife  rendered  him  literary  assistance.  Perhaps, 
as  she  looked  so  thoroughly  to  his  material  comfort,  her 
function  was  held,  "by  tacit  agreement,  to  end  there. 

As  casual  visitors,  or  volunteer  readers,  were  not  always 
in  the  way,  and  a  hired  servant  who  could  not  spell  Latin 
was  of  very  restricted  use,  it  was  not  unnatural  that  Milton 
should  look  to  his  daughters,  as  they  grew  up,  to  take  a 
share  in  supplying  his  voracious  demand  for  intellectual 
food.  Anne,  the  eldest,  though  she  had  handsome  features, 
was  deformed  and  had  an  impediment  in  her  speech,  which 
made  her  unavailable  as  a  reader.  The  other  two,  Mary 
and  Dehorah,  might  now  have  heen  of  inestimable  service 
to  their  father,  had  their  dispositions  led  them  to  adapt 
themselves  to  his  needs,  and  the  circumstances  of  the  house. 
Unfortunate  it  was  for  Milton,  that  his  "biblical  views  on 
the  inferiority  of  woman  had  been  reduced  to  practice  in 
the  bringing  up  of  his  own  daughters.  It  cannot  indeed 
be  said  that  the  poet  whose  imagination  created  the  Eve 
of  Paradise  Lost,  regarded  woman  as  the  household 
drudge,  existing  only  to  minister  to  man's  wants.  Of  all 
that  men  have  said  of  women  nothing  is  more  loftily  con- 
ceived than  the  well-known  passage  at  the  end  of  Book 

viii.  : — 

When  I  approach 
Her  loveliness,  so  absolute  she  seems, 
And  in  herself  complete,  so  well  to  know 
Her  own,  that  what  she  wills  to  do  or  say 
Seems  wisest,  virtuousest,  discreetest,  best ; 
All  higher  knowledge  in  her  presence  falls 
Degraded ;  wisdom  in  discourse  with  her 
Loses  discountenanc'd,  and  like  folly  shows  ; 
Authority  and  reason  on  her  wait, 
As  one  intended  first,  not  after  made 


xii.]  HIS  DAUGHTERS.  147 

Occasionally  ;  and,  to  consummate  all, 
Greatness  of  mind,  and  nobleness,  their  seat 
Build  in  her  loveliest,  and  create  an  awe 
About  her,  as  a  guard  angelic  plac'd. 

Bishop  Newton  thought  that,  in  drawing  Eve,  Milton 
had  in  mind  his  third  wife,  because  she  had  hair  of  the 
colour  of  Eve's  "  golden  tresses."  But  Milton  had  never 
seen  Elizabeth  Minshull.  If  reality  suggested  any  trait, 
physical  or  mental,  of  the  Eve,  it  would  certainly  have 
been  some  woman  seen  in  earlier  years. 

But  wherever  Milton  may  have  met  with  an  incarnation 
of  female  divinity  such  as  he  has  drawn,  it  was  not  in  his 
own  family.  We  cannot  but  ask,  how  is  it  that  one, 
whose  type  of  woman  is  the  loftiest  known  to  English 
literature,  should  have  brought  up  his  own  daughters  on  so 
different  a  model  1  Milton  is  not  one  of  the  false  prophets, 
who  turn  round  and  laugh  at  their  own  enthusiasms,  who 
say  one  thing  in  their  verses,  and  another  thing  over  their 
cups.  What  he  writes  in  his  poetry  is  what  he  thinks, 
what  he  means,  and  what  he  will  do.  But  in  directing 
the  bringing  up  of  his  daughters,  he  put  his  own  typical 
woman  entirely  on  one  side.  His  practice  is  framed  on 
the  principle  that 

Nothing  lovelier  can  be  found 
In  woman,  than  to  study  household  good. 

Paradise  Lost,  ix.  233. 

He  did  not  allow  his  daughters  to  learn  any  language, 
saying  with  a  gibe  that  one  tongue  was  enough  for  a  woman. 
They  were  not  sent  to  any  school,  and  had  some  sort  of 
teaching  at  home  from  a  mistress.  But  in  order  to  make 
them  useful  in  reading  to  him,  their  father  was  at  the 
pains  to  train  them  to  read  aloud  in  five  or  six  languages, 

l  2 


148  THIRD  PERIOD.    1660—1674.  [chap. 

of  none  of  which  they  understood  one  word.  "When  we 
think  of  the  time  and  labour  which  must  have  been  ex- 
pended to  teach  them  to  do  this,  it  must  occur  to  us  that 
a  little  more  labour  would  have  sufficed  to  teach  them  so 
much  of  one  or  two  of  the  languages,  as  would  have  made 
their  reading  a  source  of  interest  and  improvement  to 
themselves.  This  Milton  refused  to  do.  The  conse- 
quence was,  as  might  have  been  expected,  the  occupation 
became  so  irksome  to  them,  that  they  rebelled  against  it. 
In  the  case  of  one  of  them,  Mary,  who  was  like  her  mother 
in  person,  and  took  after  her  in  other  respects,  this  restive- 
ness  passed  into  open  revolt.  She  first  resisted,  then 
neglected,  and  finally  came  to  hate,  her  father.  "When 
some  one  spoke  in  her  presence  of  her  father's  approaching 
marriage,  she  said  "  that  was  no  news  to  hear  of  his  wed- 
ding ;  but  if  she  could  hear  of  his  death,  that  was  some- 
thing." She  combined  with  Anne,  the  eldest  daughter, 
"  to  counsel  his  maidservant  to  cheat  him  in  his  market- 
ings." They  sold  his  books  without  his  knowledge. 
"  They  made  nothing  of  deserting  him,"  he  was  often 
heard  to  complain.  They  continued  to  live  with  him  five 
or  six  years  after  his  marriage.  But  at  last  the  situation 
became  intolerable  to  both  parties,  and  they  were  sent  out 
to  learn  embroidery  in  gold  or  silver,  as  a  means  of  obtain- 
ing their  livelihood.  Deborah,  the  youngest,  was  included 
in  the  same  arrangement,  though  she  seems  to  have  been 
more  helpful  to  her  father,  and  to  have  been  at  one  time 
his  principal  reader.  Aubrey  says  that  he  "  taught  her 
Latin,  and  that  she  was  his  amanuensis."  She  even  spoke 
of  him  when  she  was  old — she  lived  to  be  seventy-four — 
with  some  tenderness.  She  was  once,  in  1725,  shewn 
Faithorne's  crayon  drawing  of  the  poet,  without  being  told 
for  whom  it  was  intended.     She  immediately  exclaimed, 


xii.]  THOMAS  ELLWOOD.  149 

"  0  Lord  !  that  is  the  picture  of  my  father  !  "  and  stroking 
down  the  hair  of  her  forehead,  added,  "  Just  so  my  father 
wore  his  hair. " 

One  of  Milton's  volunteer  readers,  and  one  to  whom  we 
owe  the  most  authentic  account  of  him  in  his  last  years, 
Avas  a  young  Quaker,  named  Thomas  Ellwood.  Milton's 
Puritanism  had  been  all  his  life  slowly  gravitating  in  the 
direction  of  more  and  more  liberty,  and  though  he  would 
not  attach  himself  to  any  sect,  he  must  have  felt  in  no  re- 
mote sympathy  with  men  who  repudiated  state  interference 
in  religious  matters,  and  disdained  ordinances.  Some 
such  sympathy  with  the  pure  spirituality  of  the  Quaker 
may  have  disposed  Milton  favourably  towards  Ellwood. 
The  acquaintance  once  begun,  was  cemented  by  mutual 
advantage.  Milton,  besides  securing  an  intelligent  reader, 
had  a  pleasure  in  teaching ;  and  Ellwood,  though  the 
reverse  of  humble,  was  teachable  from  desire  to  expand 
himself.  Ellwood  took  a  lodging  near  the  poet,  and  went 
to  him  every  day,  except  "  first-day,"  in  the  afternoon,  to 
read  Latin  to  him. 

Milton's  frequent  change  of  abode  has  been  thought 
indicative  of  a  restless  temperament,  seeking  escape  from 
petty  miseries  by  change  of  scene.  On  emerging  from 
hiding,  or  escaping  from  the  serjeant-at-arms  in  1660,  he 
lived  for  a  short  time  in  Hoi  born,  near  Red  Lion  Square. 
From  this  he  removed  to  Jewin  Street,  and  moved  again, 
on  his  marriage,  in  1662,  to  the  house  of  Millington,  the 
bookseller,  who  was  now  beginning  business,  but  who, 
before  his  death  in  1704,  had  accumulated  the  largest 
stock  of  second-hand  books  to  be  found  in  London.  His 
last  remove  was  to  a  house  in  a  newly- created  row  facing 
the  Artillery-ground,  on  the  site  of  the  west  side  of  what 
is  now  called  Bunhill  Row.     This  was  his  abode  from  his 


150  THIRD  PERIOD.    16G0— 1G7-1.  [chap. 

marriage  till  his  death,  nearly  twelve  years,  a  longer  stay 
than  he  had  made  in  any  other  residence.  This  is  the 
house  which  must  he  associated  with  the  poet  of  Paradise 
Lost,  as  it  was  here  that  the  poem  was  in  part  written,  and 
wholly  revised  and  finished.  But  the  Bunhill  Row  house 
is  only  producible  by  the  imagination  ;  every  trace  of  it 
has  long  been  swept  away,  though  the  name  Milton  Street, 
bestowed  upon  a  neighbouring  street,  preserves  the  re- 
membrance of  the  poet's  connexion  with  the  locality. 
Here  "  an  ancient  clergyman  of  Dorsetshire,  Dr.  Wright, 
found  John  Milton  in  a  small  chamber,  hung  with  rusty 
green,  sitting  in  an  elbow  chair,  and  dressed  neatly  in 
black ;  pale,  but  not  cadaverous,  his  hands  and  fingers 
gouty  and  with  chalk-stones."  At  the  door  of  this  house, 
sitting  in  the  sun,  looking  out  upon  the  Artillery-ground, 
"  in  a  grey  coarse  cloth  coat,"  he  would  receive  his  visitors. 
On  colder  days  he  would  walk  for  hours — three  or  four 
hours  at  a  time,  in  his  garden.  A  garden  was  a  sine  qua  non, 
and  he  took  care  to  have  one  to  every  house  he  lived  in. 

His  habit  in  early  life  had  been  to  study  late  into  the 
night.  After  he  lost  his  sight,  he  changed  his  hours,  and 
retired  to  rest  at  nine.  In  summer  he  rose  at  four,  in 
winter  at  five,  and  began  the  day  with  having  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  read  to  him.  "  Then  he  contemplated.  At 
seven  his  man  came  to  him  again,  and  then  read  to  him 
and  wrote  till  dinner.  The  writing  was  as  much  as  the 
reading"  (Aubrey).  Then  -he  took  exercise,  either  walk- 
ing in  the  garden,  or  swinging  in  a  machine.  His  only 
recreation,  besides  conversation,  was  music.  He  played 
the  organ  and  the  bass  viol,  the  organ  most.  Sometimes 
he  would  sing  himself  or  get  his  wife  to  sing  to  him, 
though  she  had,  ho  said,  no  ear,  yet  a  good  voice.  Then 
he  went  up  to  his  study  to  be  read  to  till  six.  After  six 
his  friends  were  admitted  to  visit  him,  and  would  sit  with 


xii.]  LITERARY  OCCUPATIONS.  151 

him  till  eight.  At  eight  he  went  down  to  supper,  usually 
olives  or  some  light  thing.  He  was  very  abstemious  in 
his  diet,  having  to  contend  Avith  a  gouty  diathesis.  He 
was  not  fastidious  in  his  choice  of  meats,  hut  content  with 
anything  that  was  in  season,  or  easy  to  be  procured. 
After  supping  thus  sparingly,  he  smoked  a  pipe  of  to- 
bacco, drank  a  glass  of  water,  and  then  retired  to  bed. 
He  was  sparing  in  his  use  of  wine.  His  Samson,  who  in 
this  as  in  other  things,  is  Milton  himself,  allays  his  thirst 
"from  the  clear  milky  juice." 

Bed  with  its  warmth  and  recumbent  posture  he  found 
favourable  to  composition.  At  other  times  he  would 
compose  or  prune  his  verses,  as  he  walked  in  the  garden, 
and  then,  coming  in,  dictate.  His  verse  was  not  at  the 
command  of  his  will.  Sometimes  he  would  lie  awake 
the  whole  night,  trying  but  unable  to  make  a  single  line. 
At  other  times  lines  flowed  without  premeditation  "  with 
a  certain  impetus  and  oestro."  What  was  his  season  of 
inspiration  is  somewhat  uncertain.  In  the  elegy  "  To 
Spring,"  Milton  says  it  was  the  spring  which  restored  his 
poetic  faculty.  Phillips,  however,  says,  "  that  his  vein 
never  floAved  happily  but  from  the  autumnal  equinox  to 
the  vernal,"  and  that  the  poet  told  him  this.  Phillips' 
reminiscence  is  perhaps  true  at  the  date  of  Paradise  Lost, 
when  Milton's  habits  had  changed  from  what  they  had 
been  at  twenty.  Or  we  may  agree  with  Toland,  that 
Phillips  has  transposed  the  seasons,  though  preserving 
the  fact  of  intermittent  inspiration.  What  he  composed 
at  night,  he  dictated  in  the  day,  sitting  obliquely  in  an 
elbow-chair,  with  his  leg  thrown  over  the  arm.  He 
would  dictate  forty  lines,  as  it  were  in  a  breath,  and  then 
reduce  them  to  half  the  number. 

Milton's  piety  is  admitted,  even  by  his  enemies;  and  it 
is  a  piety  which  oppresses  his  writings  as  well  as  his  life. 


152  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660-1671.  [chap. 

The  fact  that  a  man,  with  a  deep  sense  of  religion,  should 
not  have  attended  any  place  of  public  worship,  has  given 
great  trouble  to  Milton's  biographers.  And  the  principal 
biographers  of  this  thorough-going  nonconformist  have 
been  Anglican  clergymen;  Bishop  Newton,  Todd,  Mitford; 
Dr.  Johnson,  more  clerical  than  any  cleric,  being  no  ex- 
ception. Mitford  would  give  Milton  a  dispensation  on 
the  score  of  his  age  and  infirmities.  But  the  cause  lay 
deeper.  A  profound  apprehension  of  the  spiritual  world 
leads  to  a  disregard  of  rites.  To  a  mind  so  disposed  ex- 
ternals become,  first  indifferent,  then  impedient.  Minis- 
tration is  officious  intrusion.  I  do  not  find  that  Milton, 
though  he  wrote  against  paid  ministers  as  hirelings,  ever 
expressly  formulated  an  opinion  against  ministers  as  such. 
But  as  has  already  been  hinted,  there  grew  up  in  him,  in 
the  last  period  of  his  life,  a  secret  sympathy  with  the 
mode  of  thinking  which  came  to  characterise  the  Quaker 
sect.  Not  that  Milton  adopted  any  of  their  peculiar 
fancies.  He  affirms  categorically  the  permissibility  of 
oaths,  of  military  service,  and  requires  that  women  should 
keep  silence  in  the  congregation.  But  in  negativing  all 
means  of  arriving  at  truth  except  the  letter  of  scripture 
interpreted  by  the  inner  light,  he  stood  upon  the  same 
platform  as  the  followers  of  George  Fox. 

Milton's  latest  utterance  on  theological  topics  is  found 
in  a  tract  published  by  him  the  year  before  his  death, 
1G73.  The  piece  is  entitled  Of  true  religion,  heresy, 
scliism,  toleration;  but  its  meagre  contents  do  not  bear 
out  the  comprehensiveness  of  the  title.  The  only  matter 
really  discussed  in  the  pages  of  the  tract  is  the  limit  of 
toleration.  The  stamp  of  age  is  upon  the  style,  which  is 
more  careless  and  incoherent  even  than  usual.  He  has 
here  dictated  his  extempore  thoughts,  without  premedi- 
tation or   revision,  so   that  we  have  here   a  record   of 


xii.]  RELIGIOUS  OPINIONS.  153 

Milton's  habitual  mind.  Having  watched  him  gradually- 
emancipating  himself  from  the  contracted  Calvinistic 
mould  of  the  Bread-street  home,  it  is  disappointing  to 
see  that,  at  sixty-five,  his  development  has  proceeded 
no  further  than  we  here  find.  He  is  now  willing  to 
extend  toleration  to  all  sects  who  make  the  Scriptures 
their  sole  rule  of  faith.  Sects  may  misunderstand  Scrip- 
ture, hut  to  err  is  the  condition  of  humanity,  and  will 
he  pardoned  by  God,  if  diligence,  prayer,  and  sincerity 
have  been  used.  The  sects  named  as  to  be  tolerated  are, 
Lutherans,  Calvinists,  Anabaptists,  Arians,  Socinians, 
Arminians.  They  are  to  be  tolerated  to  the  extent  of 
being  allowed,  on  all  occasions,  to  give  account  of  their 
faith,  by  arguing,  preaching  in  their  several  assemblies, 
writing  and  printing. 

In  this  pamphlet  the  principle  of  toleration  is  flatly 
enunciated  in  opposition  to  the  practice  of  the  Restoration. 
But  the  principle  is  rested  not  on  the  statesman's  ground 
of  the  irrelevancy  of  religious  dispute  to  good  government, 
but  on  the  theological  ground  of  the  venial  nature  of 
religious  error.  And  to  permissible  error  there  are  very 
narrow  limits ;  limits  which  exclude  Catholics.  For 
Milton  will  exclude  Romanists  from  toleration,  not  on 
the  statesman's  ground  of  incivism,  but  on  the  theologian's 
ground  of  idolatry.  All  his  antagonism  in  this  tract  is 
reserved  for  the  Catholics.  There  is  not  a  hint  of  dis- 
content with  the  prelatry,  once  intolerable  to  him.  Yet 
that  prelatry  was  now  scourging  the  nonconformists 
with  scorpions  instead  of  with  whips,  with  its  Act  of 
Uniformity,  its  Conventicle  Act,  its  Five-mile  Act,  filling 
the  gaols  with  Milton's  own  friends  and  fellow -religionists. 
Several  times,  in  these  thirteen  pages,  he  appeals  to  the 
practice  or  belief  of  the  Church  of  England,  once  even 
calling  it  "  our  church." 


154  THIRD  PERIOD.     16G0— 1674.  [chap. 

This  tract  alone  is  sufficient  refutation  of  an  idle  story 
that  Milton  died  a  Eoman  Catholic.  The  story  is  not  well 
vouched,  being  hearsay  three  times  removed.  Milton's 
younger  brother,  Sir  Christopher,  is  said  to  have  said  so 
at  a  dinner  entertainment.  If  he  ever  did  say  as  much, 
it  must  be  set  down  to  that  peculiar  form  of  credulity 
which  makes  perverts  think  that  every  one  is  about  to 
follow  their  example.  In  Christopher  Milton,  "  a  man  of 
no  parts  or  ability,  and  a  superstitious  nature"  (Toland), 
such  credulity  found  a  congenial  soil. 

The  tract  Of  true  religion  was  Milton's  latest  pub- 
lished work.  But  he  was  preparing  for  the  press,  at  the 
time  of  his  death,  a  more  elaborate  theological  treatise. 
Daniel  Skinner,  a  nephew  of  his  old  friend  Cyriac,  was 
serving  as  Milton's  amanuensis  in  writing  out  a  fair  copy. 
Death  came  before  a  third  of  the  work  of  correction, 
196  pages  out  of  735,  had  been  completed,  of  which  the 
whole  rough  draft  consists.  The  whole  remained  in 
Daniel  Skinner's  hands  in  1674.  Milton,  though  in  his 
preface  he  is  aware  that  his  pages  contain  not  a  little 
which  will  be  unpalatable  to  the  reigning  opinion  in  re- 
ligion, would  have  dared  publication,  if  he  could  have 
passed  the  censor.  But  Daniel  Skinner,  who  was  a 
Fellow  of  Trinity,  and  had  a  career  before  him,  was  not 
equally  free,  "What  could  not  appear  in  London,  how- 
ever, might  be  printed  at  Amsterdam.  Skinner  accord- 
ingly put  both  the  theological  treatise,  and  the  epistles 
written  by  the  Latin  Secretary,  into  the  hands  of  Daniel 
Elzevir.  The  English  government  getting  intelligence 
of  the  proposed  publication  of  the  foreign  correspondence 
of  the  Parliament  and  the  Protector,  interfered,  and 
pressure  was  put  upon  Skinner,  through  the  Master  of 
Trinity,  Isaac  Barrow.     Skinner  hastened  to  save  him- 


xii.]  .RELIGIOUS  OPINIONS.  155 

self  from  the  fate  which  in  1G81  befel  Locke,  and  gave 
up  to  the  Secretary  of  State,  not  only  the  Latin  letters, 
but  the  MS.  of  the  theological  treatise.  Nothing  further 
was  known  as  to  the  fate  of  the  MS.  till  1823,  when  it 
was  disinterred  from  one  of  the  presses  of  the  old  State 
Paper  Office.  -The  Secretary  of  State,  Sir  Joseph  Wil- 
liamson, when  he  retired  from  office  in  1678,  instead 
of  carrying  away  his  correspondence  as  had  been  the  cus- 
tom, left  it  behind  him.  Thus  it  was  that  the  Treatise 
of  Christian  doctrine  first  saw  light,  one  hundred  and 
fifty  years  after  the  author's  death. 

In  a  work  which  had  been  written  as  a  text-book  for 
the  use  of  learners,  there  can  be  little  scope  for  origi- 
nality. And  Milton  follows  the  division  of  the  matter 
into  heads  usual  in  the  manuals  then  current.  But  it 
was  impossible  for  Milton  to  handle  the  dry  bones  of  a 
divinity  compendium  without  stirring  them  into  life. 
And  divinity  which  is  made  to  live,  necessarily  becomes 
unorthodox. 

The  usual  method  of  the  school  text-books  of  the 
seventeenth  century  was  to  exhibit  dogma  in  the  artificial 
terminology  of  the  controversies  of  the  sixteenth  century. 
For  this  procedure  Milton  substitutes  the  words  of  Scrip- 
ture simply.  The  traditional  terms  of  the  text-books 
are  retained,  but  they  are  employed  only  as  heads  under 
which  to  arrange  the  words  of  Scripture.  This  process, 
which  in  other  hands  would  be  little  better  than  index 
making,  becomes  here  pregnant  with  meaning.  The 
originality  which  Milton  voluntarily  resigns,  in  em- 
ploying only  the  words  of  the  Bible,  he  recovers  by  his 
freedom  of  exposition.  He  shakes  himself  loose  from  the 
trammels  of  traditional  exposition,  and  looks  at  the  texts 
for  himself.     The  truth  was 


156  THIRD  PERIOD.    1660—1674.  [chap. 

Left  only  in  those  written  records  pure, 
Though  not  but  by  the  spirit  understood. 

Paradise  Lost,  xii.  510. 

Upon   the   points   which   interested   him    most   closely, 
Milton  knew  that  his  understanding  of  the  text  differed 
from  the  standard  of  Protestant  orthodoxy.     That  God 
created  matter,  not  out  of  nothing,  hut  out  of  Himself, 
and  that  death  is,  in  the  course  of  nature,  total  extinction 
of  being,  though  not  opinions  received,  were  not  singular. 
More  startling,  to  European  modes  of  thinking,  is  his  as- 
sertion that  polygamy  is  not,  in  itself,  contrary  to  morality, 
though  it  may  bo  inexpedient.     The  religious  sentiment 
of  his  day  was  offended  by  his  vigorous  vindication  of  the 
freewill  of  man  against  the  reigning  Calvinism,  and  his 
assertion  of  the  inferiority  of  the  Son  in  opposition  to  the 
received  Athanasianism.     He  labours  this  point  of  the 
nature  of  God  with  especial  care,  showing  how  greatly  it 
occupied  his  thoughts.     He  arranges  his  texts  so  as  to 
exhibit  in  Scriptural  language  the  semi-Arian  scheme,  i.  e. 
a  scheme  which,  admitting  the  co-essentiality,  denies  the 
eternal  generation.      Through   all   this   manipulation    of 
texts  we  seem  to  see,  that  Milton  is  not  the  school  logi- 
cian erecting  a  consistent  fabric  of  words,  but  that  he  is 
dominated  by  an  imagination  peopled  with  concrete  per- 
sonalities,  and  labouring  to   assign  their  places  to  the 
Father  and  the  Son  as  separate  agents  in  the  mundane 
drama.     The  De  dodrina  Christiana  is  the  prose  counter- 
part of  Paradise  Lost  and  Regained,  a  caput  mortuum  of 
the  poems,  with  every  ethereal  particle  evaporated. 

In  the  royal  injunctions  of  1614,  James  I.  had  ordered 
students  in  the  universities  not  to  insist  too  long  upon 
compendiums,  but  to  study  the  Scriptures,  and  to  bestow 
their  time  upon  the  fathers  and  councils.     In  his  attempt 


xii.]  HISTORY  OF  PARADISE  LOST.  157 

to  express  dogmatic  theology  in  the  words  of  Scripture, 
Milton  was  unwittingly  obeying  this  injunction.  The 
other  part  of  the  royal  direction  as  to  fathers  and  councils 
it  was  not  in  Milton's  plan  to  carry  out.  Neither  indeed 
was  it  in  his  power,  for  he  had  not  the  necessary  learning. 
M.  Scherer  says  that  Milton  "  laid  all  antiquity,  sacred 
and  profane,  under  contribution."  So  far  is  this  from 
being  the  case,  that  while  he  exhibits,  in  this  treatise,  an 
intimate  knowledge  of  the  text  of  the  canonical  books, 
Hebrew  and  Greek,  there  is  an  absence  of  that  average 
acquaintance  with  Christian  antiquity  which  formed  at 
that  day  the  professional  outfit  of  the  episcopal  divine. 
Milton's  references  to  the  fathers  are  perfunctory  and 
second-hand.  The  only  citation  of  Chrysostom,  for  in- 
stance, which  I  have  noticed  is  in  these  words:  "the  same 
is  said  to  be  the  opinion  of  Chrysostom,  Luther,  and  other 
moderns."  He  did  not  esteem  the  judgment  of  the  fathers 
sufficiently,  to  deem  them  worth  studying.  In  the  inter- 
pretation of  texts,  as  in  other  matters  of  opinion,  Milton 
withdrew  within  the  fortress  of  his  absolute  personality. 

I  have  now  to  relate  the  external  history  of  the  com- 
position of  Paradise  Lost.  When  Milton  had  to  skulk 
for  a  time  in  1660,  he  was  already  in  steady  work  upon 
the  poem.  Though  a  few  lines  of  it  were  composed  as 
early  as  1642,  it  was  not  till  1658  that  he  took  up  the 
task  of  composition  continuously.  If  we  may  trust  our 
only  authority  (Aubrey-Phillips),  he  had  finished  it  in 
1663,  about  the  time  of  his  marriage.  In  polishing, 
re-writing,  and  writing  out  fair,  much  might  remain 
to  be  done,  after  the  poem  was,  in  a  way,  finished. 
It  is  in  1665,  that  we  first  make  acquaintance  with 
Paradise  Lost  in  a  complete  state.     This  was  the  year 


158  THIED  PERIOD.    16C0-1G74.  [chap. 

of  the  plague,  known  in  our  annals  as  the  Great  Plague, 
to  distinguish  its  desolating  ravages  from  former  slighter 
visitations  of  the  epidemic.  Every  one  who  could  fled 
from  the  city  of  destruction.  Milton  applied  to  his 
young  friend  Ellwood  to  find  him  a  shelter.  Ellwood, 
who  was  then  living  as  tutor  in  the  house  of  the  Pen- 
ningtons,  took  a  cottage  for  Milton  in  their  neighbour- 
hood, at  Chalfont  St.  Giles,  in  the  county  of  Bucks. 
Not  only  the  Penningtons,  but  General  Fleetwood  had 
also  his  residence  near  this  village,  and  a  report  is  men- 
tioned by  Howitt  that  it  was  Fleetwood  who  provided 
the  ex-secretary  with  a  refuge.  The  society  of  neither 
of  these  friends  was  available  for  Milton.  For  Fleetwood 
was  a  sentenced  regicide,  and  in  July,  Pennington  and 
Ellwood  were  hurried  off  to  Aylesbury  gaol  by  an  inde- 
fatigable justice  of  the  peace,  who  was  desirous  of  giving 
evidence  of  his  zeal  for  the  king's  government.  That 
the  Chalfont  cottage  "  was  not  pleasantly  situated,"  must 
have  been  indifferent  to  the  blind  old  man,  as  much  so 
as  that  the  immediate  neighbourhood,  with  its  heaths  and 
wooded  uplands,  reproduced  the  scenery  he  had  loved 
when  he  wrote  V Allegro. 

As  soon  as  Ellwood  was  relieved  from  imprisonment,  he 
returned  to  Chalfont.  Then  it  was  that  Milton  put  into 
his  hands  the  completed  Paradise  Lost,  "  bidding  me  take 
it  home  with  me,  and  read  it  at  my  leisure,  and  when  I  had 
so  done,  return  it  to  him  with  my  judgment  thereupon." 
On  returning  it,  besides  giving  the  author  the  benefit  of 
his  judgment,  a  judgment  not  preserved,  and  not  indis- 
pensable— the  Quaker  made  his  famous  speech,  "Thou 
hast  said  much  here  of  Paradise  Lost,  but  what  hast  thou 
to  say  of  Paradise  found? "  Milton  afterwards  told 
Ellwood  that  to  this  casual  question  was  due  his  writing 
Paradise  Regained.     We  are  not,  however,  to  take  this 


xii.]  HISTORY  OF  PARADISE  LOST.  159 

complaisant  speech  quite  literally,  for  it  is  highly  probahle 
that  the  later  poem  was  included  in  the  original  con- 
ception, if  not  in  the  scheme  of  the  first  epic.  But  we  do 
get  from  Ellwood's  reminiscence  a  date  for  the  beginning 
of  Paradise  Regained,  which  must  have  been  at  Chalfont 
in  the  autumn  of  16G5. 

When  the  plague  was  abated,  and  the  city  had  become 
safely  habitable,  Milton  returned  to  Artillery  Eow.  He 
had  not  been  long  back  when  London  was  devastated  by 
a  fresh  calamity,  only  less  terrible  than  the  plague,  because 
it  destroyed  the  home,  and  not  the  life.  The  Great  Fire 
succeeded  the  Great  Plague.  13,000  houses,  two-thirds 
of  the  city,  were  reduced  to  ashes,  and  the  whole  current 
of  life  and  business  entirely  suspended.  Through  these 
two  overwhelming  disasters,  Milton  must  have  been 
supporting  his  solitary  spirit  by  writing  Paradise  Re- 
gained, Samson  Agonistes,  and  giving  the  final  touches 
to  Paradise  Lost.  He  was  now  so  wholly  unmoved  by 
his  environment,  that  we  look  in  vain  in  the  poems  for 
any  traces  of  this  season  of  suffering  and  disaster.  The 
past  and  his  own  meditations  were  now  all  in  all  to  him ; 
the  horrors  of  the  present  were  as  nothing  to  a  man  who 
had  outlived  his  hopes.  Plague  and  fire,  what  were  they, 
after  the  ruin  of  the  noblest  of  causes  1  The  stoical  com- 
pression of  Paradise  Regained  is  in  perfect  keeping  with 
the  fact  that  it  was  in  the  middle  of  the  ruins  of  London 
that  Milton  placed  his  finished  poem  in  the  hands  of  the 
licenser. 

For  licenser  there  was  now,  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury  to  wit,  for  religious  literature.  Of  course  the 
Primate  read  by  deputy,  usually  one  of  his  chaplains. 
The  reader  into  whose  hands  Paradise  Lost  came,  though 
an  Oxford  man,  and  a  cleric  on  his  preferment,  who  had 
written  his   pamphlet   against  the  dissenters,  happened 


160  THIRD  PERIOD.    1660—1674.  [chap. 

to  be  one  whose  antecedents,  as  Fellow  of  All  Souls, 
and  Proctor  (in  1G63),  ensured  his  taking  a  less  pedantic 
and  bigoted  view  of  his  duties.  Still,  though  Dryden's 
dirty  plays  would  have  encountered  no  objection  before 
such  a  tribunal,  the  same  facilities  were  not  likely  to  bo 
accorded  to  anything  which  bore  the  name  of  John 
Milton,  ex-secretary  to  Oliver,  and  himself  an  austere 
republican.  Tomkyns—  that  was  the  young  chaplain's 
name — did  stumble  at  a  phrase  in  Book  i.  598, 

With  fear  of  change 
Perplexes  monarchs. 

There  had  been  in  England,  and  were  to  be  again,  times 
when  men  had  hanged  for  less  than  this.  Tomkyns,  who 
was  sailing  on  the  smooth  sea  of  preferment  Avith  a  fair 
wind,  did  not  wish  to  get  into  trouble,  but  at  last  he  let 
the  book  pass.  Perhaps  he  thought  it  was  only  religious 
verse  written  for  the  sectaries,  which  would  never  be 
heard  of  at  court,  or  among  the  wits,  and  that  therefore  it 
was  of  little  consequence  what  it  contained. 

A  publisher  was  found,  notwithstanding  that  Paul's,  or 
as  it  now  was  again,  St.  Paul's-Churchyard  had  ceased 
to  exist,  in  Aldersgate,  which  lay  outside  the  circuit  of 
the  conflagration.  The  agreement,  still  preserved  in  the 
national  museum,  between  the  author,  "John  Milton, 
gent,  of  the  one  parte,  and  Samuel  Symons,  printer, 
of  the  other  parte,"  is  among  the  curiosities  of  our  literary 
history.  The  curiosity  consists  not  so  much  in  the 
illustrious  name  appended  (not  in  autograph)  to  the  deed, 
as  in  the  contrast  between  the  present  fame  of  the  book, 
and  the  waste-paper  price  at  which  the  copyright  is  being 
valued.  The  author  received  5/.  down,  was  to  receive  a 
second  57.  when  the  first  edition  should  be  sold,  a  third 
51.  when  the  second,  and   a  fourth  51.  when  the  third 


xii.]  HISTORY  OF  PARADISE  LOST.  1G1 

edition  should  be  gone.  Milton  lived  to  receive  the 
second  51.,  and  no  more,  101.  in  all,  for  Paradise  Lost. 
I  cannot  bring  myself  to  join  in  the  lamentations  of  the 
biographers  over  this  bargain.  Surely  it  is  better  so ; 
better  to  know  that  the  noblest  monument  of  English 
letters  had  no  money  value,  than  to  think  of  it  as  having 
been  paid  for  at  a  pound  the  line. 

The  agreement  with  Symons  is  dated  27  April,  1667,  the 
eutry  in  the  register  of  Stationers'  Hall  is  20th  August. 
It  was  therefore  in  the  autumn  of  1667  that  Paradise 
Lost  was  in  the  hands  of  the  public.  "We  have  no  data 
for  the  time  occupied  in  the  composition  of  Paradise 
Regained  and  Samson  Ayonistes.  We  have  seen  that  the 
former  poem  was  begun  at  Chalfont  in  1665,  and  it  may 
be  conjecturally  stated  that  Samson  was  finished  before 
September,  1667.  At  any  rate,  both  the  poems  were  pub- 
lished together  in  the  autumn  of  1670. 

Milton  had  four  years  more  of  life  granted  him  after 
this  publication.  But  he  wrote  no  more  poetry.  It  was 
as  if  he  had  exhausted  his  strength  in  a  last  effort,  in  the 
Promethean  agony  of  Samson,  and  knew  that  his  hour  of 
inspiration  was  passed  away.  But,  like  all  men  who  have 
once  tasted  the  joys  and  pangs  of  composition,  he  could 
not  now  do  without  its  excitement.  The  occupation,  and 
the  indispensable  solace  of  the  last  ten  sad  years,  had  been 
his  poems.  He  would  not  write  more  verse,  when  the 
oestrus  was  not  on  him,  but  he  must  write.  He  took  up  all 
the  dropped  threads  of  past  years,  ambitious  plans  formed 
in  the  fulness  of  vigour,  and  laid  aside,  but  not  abandoned. 
He  was  the  very  opposite  of  Shelley,  who  could  never  look 
at  a  piece  of  Iris  own  composition  a  second  time,  but  when 
he  had  thrown  it  off  at  a  heat,  rushed  into  something  else. 
Milton's  adhesiveness  was  such  that  he  could  never  give 

M 


162  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660—1674.  [chap. 

up  a  design  once  entered  upon.  In  these  four  years,  as  if 
conscious  that  his  time  was  now  nearly  out,  he  laboured 
to  complete  five  such  early  undertakings. 

(1.)  Of  his  Compendium  of  Theology  I  have  already 
spoken.  He  was  overtaken  by  death  while  preparing  this 
for  the  press. 

(2.)  His  History  of  Britain  must  have  cost  him  much 
labour,  bestowed  upon  comparison  of  the  conflicting 
authorities.  It  is  the  record  of  the  studies  he  had  made 
for  his  abandoned  epic  poem,  and  is  evidence  how  much 
the  subject  occupied  his  mind. 

The  History  of  Britain,  1670,  had  been  preceded  by 
(3)  a  Latin  grammar,  in  1669,  and  was  followed  by  (4) 
a  Logic  on  the  method  of  Ramus,  1672. 

(5.)  In  1673  he  brought  out  a  new  edition  of  his  early 
volume  of  Poems.  In  this  volume  he  printed  for  the 
first  time  the  sonnets,  and  other  pieces,  which  had  been 
written  in  the  interval  of  twenty-seven  years  since  the  date 
of  his  first  edition.  Not,  indeed,  all  the  sonnets  which  we 
now  have.  Four,  in  which  Fairfax,  Vane,  Cromwell,  and 
the  Commonwealth  are  spoken  of  as  Milton  would  speak 
of  them,  were  necessarily  kept  back,  and  not  put  into  print 
tdl  1694,  by  Phillips,  at  the  end  of  his  life  of  his  uncle. 

In  proportion  to  the  trouble  which  Milton's  words  cost 
him,  was  his  care  in  preserving  them.  His  few  Latin 
letters  to  his  foreign  friends  are  remarkably  barren  either 
of  fact  or  sentiment.  But  Milton  liked  them  well  enough 
to  have  kept  copies  of  them,  and  now  allowed  a  publisher, 
Brabazon  Aylmer,  to  issue  them  in  print,  adding  to  them, 
with  a  view  to  make  out  a  volume,  his  college  exercises, 
which  he  had  also  preserved. 

Among  the  papers  which  he  left  at  his  death,  were  the 
beginnings  of  two  undertakings,  either  of  them  of  over- 


xir.]  LITERARY  OCCUPATIONS.  163 

whelming  magnitude,  which,  he  did  not  live  to  complete. 
We  have  seen  that  he  taught  his  pupils  geography  out  of 
Davity,  Description  de  VUnivers.  He  was  not  satisfied 
with  this,  or  with  any  existing  compendium.  They  were 
all  dry ;  exact  enough  with  their  latitudes  and  longitudes, 
hut  omitted  such  uninteresting  stuff  as  manners,  govern- 
ment, religion,  &c.  Milton  would  essay  a  hetter  system. 
All  he  had  ever  executed  was  Eussia,  taking  the  pains  to 
turn  over  and  extract  for  his  purpose  all  the  "best  travels 
in  that  country.  This  is  the  fragment  which  figures  in  his 
"Works  as  a  Brief  History  of  Moscovia. 

The  hackneyed  metaphor  of  Pegasus  harnessed  to  & 
luggage  trolley,  will  recur  to  us  when  we  think  of  the 
author  of  L' Allegro,  setting  himself  to  compile  a  Latin 
lexicon.  If  there  is  any  literary  drudgery  more  mechani- 
cal than  another,  it  is  generally  supposed  to  he  that  of 
making  a  dictionary.  Nor  had  he  taken  to  this  industry 
as  a  resource  in  age,  Avhen  the  genial  flow  of  invention  had 
dried  up,  and  original  composition  had  ceased  to  he  in  his 
power.  The  three  folio  volumes  of  MS.  which  Milton  left 
were  the  work  of  his  youth ;  it  was  a  work  which  the  loss 
of  eyesight  of  necessity  put  an  end  to.  It  is  not  Milton 
only,  hut  all  students  who  read-  with  an  alert  mind,  read- 
ing to  grow,  and  not  to  remember,  who  have  felt  the  want 
of  an  occupation  which  shall  fill  those  hours  when  mental 
vigilance  is  impossible,  and  vacuity  unendurahle.  Index- 
making  or  cataloguing  has  heen  the  resource  of  many  in 
such  hours.  But  it  was  not,  I  think,  as  a  mere  shifting 
of  mental  posture  that  Milton  undertook  to  rewrite  Eohert 
Stephens ;  it  was  as  part  of  his  language  training.  Only 
hy  diligent  practice  and  incessant  exercise  of  attention  and 
care,  could  Milton  have  educated  his  susceptihility  to  the 
specific  power  of  words,  to  the  nicety  which  he  attained 

m  2 


16-i  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660—1674.  [ch.  xii. 

beyond  any  other  of  our  poets.  Part  of  this  education  is 
recorded  in  the  seemingly  withered  leaves  of  his  Latin 
Thesaurus,  though  the  larger  part  must  have  been 
achieved,  not  by  a  reflective  and  critical  collection  of 
examples,  but  by  a  vital  aud  impassioned  reading. 

Milton's  complaint  was  what  the  profession  of  that  day 
called  gout.  "He  would  be  very  cheerful  even  in  his 
gout  fits,  aud  sing,"  says  Aubrey.  This  gout  returned 
again  and  again,  and  by  these  repeated  attacks  wore  out 
his  resisting  power.  He  died  of  the  "  gout  struck  in  "  on 
Sunday,  8th  November,  1674,  and  was  buried,  near  his 
father,  in  the  chancel  of  St.  Giles's,  Cripplegate.  The 
funeral  was  attended,  Toland  says,  "  by  all  his  learned  and 
great  friends  in  London,  not  without  a  friendly  concourse 
of  the  vulgar."  The  disgusting  profanation  of  the  leaden 
coffin,  and  dispersion  of  the  poet's  bones  by  the  parochial 
authorities,  during  the  repair  of  the  church  in  August, 
1790,  has  been  denied,  but  it  is  to  be  feared  the  fact  is 
too  true. 


CHAPTER  XIIT. 

rARADISE  LOST PARADISE  REGAINED SAMSON  AGONISTES. 

"  Many  men  of  forty,"  it  has  been  said,  "  are  dead  poets  ;" 
and  it  might  seem  that  Milton,  Latin  secretary,  and  party 
pamphleteer,  had  died  to  poetry  about  the  fatal  age.  In 
1645,  when  he  made  a  gathering  of  his  early  pieces  for  the 
volume  published  by  Humphry  Moseley,  he  wanted  three 
years  of  forty.  That  volume  contained,  besides  other 
things,  Comas,  Lycidas,  V Allegro,  and  II  Penseroso ; 
then,  when  produced,  as  they  remain  to  this  day,  the 
finest  flower  of  English  poesy.  But,  though  thus  like  a 
wary  husbandman,  garnering  his  sheaves  in  presence  of 
the  threatening  storm,  Milton  had  no  intention  of  bidding 
farewell  to  poetry.  On  the  contrary,  he  regarded  this 
volume  only  as  first-fruits,  an  earnest  of  greater  things  to 
come. 

The  ruling  idea  of  Milton's  life,  and  the  key  to  his 
mental  history,  is  his  resolve  to  produce  a  great  poem. 
Not  that  the  aspiration  in  itself  is  singular,  for  it  is  pro- 
bably shared  by  every  young  poet  in  his  turn.  As  every 
clever  schoolboy  is  destined  by  himself  or  his  friends  to 
become  Lord  Chancellor,  and  every  private  in  the  French 
army  carries  in  his  haversack  the  baton  of  a  marshal,  so 
it  is  a  necessary  ingredient  of  the  dream  on  Parnassus, 


166  THIRD  PERIOD.    1660— 1674  [chap. 

that  it  should  embody  itself  in  a  form  of  surpassing  bril- 
liance. What  distinguishes  Milton  from  the  crowd  of 
young  ambition,  "audax  juventa,"  is  the  constancy  of 
resolve.  He  not  only  nourished  through  manhood  the 
dream  of  youth,  keeping  under  the  importunate  instincts 
which  carry  off  most  ambitions  in  middle  life  into  the 
pursuit  of  place,  profit,  honour — the  thorns  which  spring 
up  and  smother  the  wheat — but  carried  out  his  dream  in 
its  integrity  in  old  age.  He  formed  himself  for  this 
achievement,  and  for  no  other.  Study  at  home,  travel 
abroad,  the  arena  of  political  controversy,  the  public 
service,  the  practice  of  the  domestic  virtues,  were  so  many 
parts  of  the  schooling  which  was  to  make  a  poet. 

The  reader  who  has  traced  with  me  thus  far  the  course 
of  Milton's  mental  development  will  perhaps  be  ready  to 
believe,  that  this  idea  had  taken  entire  possession  of  his 
mind  from  a  very  early  age.  The  earliest  written  record 
of  it  is  of  date  1632,  in  Sonnet  n.  This  was  written 
as  early  as  the  poet's  twenty -third  year  ;  and  in  these 
lines  the  resolve  is  uttered,  not  as  then  just  conceived,  but 
as  one  long  brooded  upon,  and  its  non-fulfilment  matter 
of  self-reproach. 

If  this  sonnet  stood  alone,  its  relevance  to  a  poetical,  or 
even  a  literary  performance,  might  be  doubtful.  But  at 
the  time  of  its  composition  it  is  enclosed  in  a  letter  to  an 
unnamed  friend,  who  seems  to  have  been  expressing  his 
surprise  that  the  Cambridge  B.A.  was  not  settling  himeelf, 
now  that  his  education  was  complete,  to  a  profession. 
Milton's  apologetic  letter  is  extant,  and  was  printed  by 
Birch  in  1738.  It  intimates  that  Milton  did  not  consider 
his  education,  for  the  purposes  he  had  in  view,  as  anything 
like  complete.  It  is  not  "  the  endless  delight  of  specula- 
tion," but  "a  religious  advisement  how  best  to  undergo  ; 


xin.]  PARADISE  LOST.  167 

not  taking  thought  of  "being  late,  so  it  give  advantage  io 
be  more  fit."  He  repudiates  the  love  of  learning  for  its 
own  sake ;  knowledge  is  not  an  end,  it  is  only  equipment 
for  performance.  There  is  here  no  specific  engagement  as 
to  the  nature  of  the  performance.  But  what  it  is  to  be,  is 
suggested  by  the  enclosure  of  the  "  Petrarchian  stanza  " 
(i.  e.  the  sonnet).  This  notion  that  his  life  was  like 
Samuel's,  a  dedicated  life,  dedicated  to  a  service  which 
required  a  long  probation,  recurs  again  more  than  once  in 
his  writings.  It  is  emphatically  repeated,  in  1641,  in  a 
passage  of  the  pamphlet  No.  4  : — 

None  hath  by  more  studious  ways  endeavoured,  and  with 
more  unwearied  spirit  none  shall, — that  I  dare  almost  aver  of 
myself,  as  far  as  life  and  full  license  will  extend.  Neither  do  I 
think  it  shame  to  covenant  with  any  knowing  reader  that  for 
some  few  years  yet  I  may  go  on  trust  with  him  toward  the  pay- 
ment of  what  I  am  now  indebted,  as  being  a  work  not  to  be 
raised  from  the  heat  of  youth,  or  the  vapours  of  wine,  like  that 
which  flows  at  waste  from  the  pen  of  some  vulgar  amorist,  or 
the  trencher  fury  of  a  rhyming  parasite,  nor  to  be  obtained 
by  the  invocation  of  Dame  Memory  and  her  siren  daughters, 
but  by  devout  prayer  to  that  Eternal  Spirit  who  can  enrich 
with  all  utterance  and  knowledge,  and  sends  out  his  seraphim 
with  the  hallowed  fire  of  his  altar  to  touch  and  purify  the  life 
of  whom  he  pleases.  To  this  must  be  added  industrious  and 
select  reading,  steady  observation,  insight  into  all  seemly  and 
generous  acts  and  affairs.  Till  which  in  some  measure  be  com- 
passed, at  mine  own  peril  and  cost,  I  refuse  not  to  sustain  this 
expectation,  from  as  many  as  are  not  loth  to  hazard  so  much 
credulity  upon  the  best  pledges  that  I  can  give  them. 

In  1638,  at  the  age  of  nine  and  twenty,  Milton  has 
already  determined  that  this  lifework  shall  be  a  poem, 
an  epic  poem,  and  that  its  subject  shall  probably  be  the 
Arthurian  legend. 


168  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660—1674.  [cuap. 

Si  quando  indigenas  revocabo  in  carmina  reges, 
Arturamque  etiam  sub  terris  bella  moventem, 
Aut  dicam  invictae  sociali  foedere  mensta 
Magnanimos  heroas,  et,  o  modo  spiritus  adsit ! 
Frangam  Saxonicas  Britonum  sub  marte  phalangas. 

May  I  find  such  a  friend  ....  when,  if  ever,  I  shall  revive 
in  song  our  native  princes,  and  among  them  Arthur  moving  to 
the  fray  even  in  the  nether  world,  and  when  I  shall,  if  only 
inspiration  be  mine,  break  the  Saxon  bands  before  our  Britons' 
prowess. 

The  same  announcement  is  reproduced  in  the  Epi- 
taphium  Damonis,  1639,  and,  in  Pamphlet  No.  4,  in  the 
often-quoted  words  : — 

Perceiving  that  some  trifles  which  I  had  in  memory,  com- 
posed at  under  twenty,  or  thereabout,  met  with  acceptance,  .  .  . 
I  began  to  assent  to  them  (the  Italians)  and  divers  of  my 
friends  here  at  home,  and  not  less  to  an  inward  prompting 
which  now  grows  daily  upon  me,  that  by  labour  and  intent 
study,  which  I  take  to  be  my  portion  in  this  life,  joined  with 
the  strong  propensity  of  nature,  I  might  perhaps  leave  some- 
thing so  written  to  aftertimes  as  they  should  not  willingly  let 
it  die. 

Between  the  publication  of  the  collected  Poems  in 
1645,  and  the  appearance  of  Paradise  Lost  in  1667,  a 
period  of  twenty-two  years,  Milton  gave  no  public  sign 
of  redeeming  this  pledge.  He  seemed  to  his  cotempo- 
raries  to  have  renounced  the  follies  of  his  youth,  the 
gewgaws  of  verse,  and  to  have  sobered  down  into  the 
useful  citizen.  "Le  bon  poete,"  thought  Malherbe, 
"n'est  pas  plus  utile  a  letat  qu'un  bon  joueur  de  quilles." 
Milton  had  postponed  his  poem,  in  1641,  till  "the  land 
had  once  enfranchished  herself  from  this  impertinent  yoke 
of  prelatry,   under   whose   inquisitorious  and   tyrannical 


xiii.]  PARADISE  LOST.  109 

duncery  no  free  and  splendid  wit  can  nourish."  Prelatry 
was  swept  away,  and  he  asked  for  further  remand  on 
account  of  the  war.  Peace  was  concluded,  the  country 
was  settled  under  the  strong  government  of  a  Protector, 
and  Milton's  great  work  did  not  appear.  It  was  not  even 
preparing.  He  was  writing  not  poetry  hut  prose,  and 
that  most  ephemeral  and  valueless  kind  of  prose,  pam- 
phlets, extempore  articles  on  the  topics  of  the  day.  He 
poured  out  reams  of  them,  in  simple  unconsciousness  that 
they  had  no  influence  whatever  on  the  current  of  events. 

Nor  was  it  that,  during  all  these  years,  Milton  was 
meditating  in  secret  what  he  could  not  hring  forward  in 
public ;  that  he  was  only  holding  hack  from  publishing, 
because  there  was  no  public  ready  to  listen  to  his 
song.  In  these  years  Milton  was  neither  writing  nor 
thinking  poetry.  Of  the  twenty-four  sonnets  indeed — 
twenty-four,  reckoning  the  twenty-lined  piece,  "The 
forcers  of  conscience,"  as  a  sonnet — eleven  belong  to  this 
period.  But  they  do  not  form  a  continuous  series,  such 
as  do  Wordsworth's  Ecclesiastical  Sonnets,  nor  do  they 
evince  a  sustained  mood  of  poetical  meditation.  On  the 
contrary,  their  very  force  and  beauty  consist  in  their 
being  the  momentary  and  spontaneous  explosion  of  an 
emotion  welling  up  from  the  depths  of  the  soul,  and 
forcing  itself  into  metrical  expression,  as  it  were,  in  spite 
of  the  writer.  While  the  first  eight  sonnets,  written 
before  1645,  are  sonnets  of  reminiscence  and  intention, 
like  those  of  the  Italians,  or  the  ordinary  English  sonnet, 
the  eleven  sonnets  of  Milton's  silent  period,  from  1645  to 
1658,  are  records  of  present  feeling  kindled  by  actual 
facts.  In  their  naked,  unadorned  simplicity  of  language, 
they  may  easily  seem,  to  a  reader  fresh  from  Petrarch,  to 
be  homely  and  prosaic.     Place  them  in  relation  to  the 


170  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660-1G74.  [ciup. 

circumstance  on  which  each  piece  turns,  and  we  begin  to 
feel  the  superiority  for  poetic  effect  of  real  emotion  over 
emotion  meditated  and  revived.  History  has  in  it  that 
which  can  touch  us  more  abidingly  than  any  fiction.  It 
is  this  actuality  which  distinguishes  the  sonnets  of  Milton 
from  any  other  sonnets.  Of  this  difference  Wordsworth 
was  conscious  when  he  struck  out  the  phrase,  "In  his 
hand  the  thing  became  a  trumpet."  Macaulay  compared 
the  sonnets  in  their  majestic  severity  to  the  collects. 
They  remind  us  of  a  Hebrew  psalm,  with  its  undisguised 
outrush  of  rage,  revenge,  exultation,  or  despair,  where 
nothing  is  due  to  art  or  artifice,  and  whose  poetry  is  the 
expression  of  the  heart,  and  not  a  branch  of  literature. 
It  is  in  the  sonnets  we  most  realise  the  force  of  Words- 
worth's image — 

Thou  hadst  a  voice  whoso  sound  was  like  the  sea. 

We  are  not  then  to  look  in  the  sonnets  for  latent  traces 
of  the  suspended  poetic  creation.  They  come  from  the 
other  side  of  Milton's  nature,  the  political,  not  the  artistic. 
They  are  akin  to  the  prose  pamphlets,  not  to  Paradise  Lost. 
Just  when  the  sonnets  end,  the  composition  of  the  epic 
was  taken  in  hand.  The  last  of  the  sonnets  (23  in  the 
ordinary  numeration)  was  written  in  1G58,  and  it  is  to 
the  same  year  that  our  authority,  Aubrey-Phillips,  refers 
his  beginning  to  occupy  himself  with  Paradise  Lost.  He 
had  by  this  time  settled  the  two  points  about  which  he 
had  been  long  in  doubt,  the  subject,  and  the  form.  Long 
before  bringing  himself  to  the  point  of  composition,  he 
had  decided  upon  the  Fall  of  man  as  subject,  and  upon  the 
narrative,  or  epic,  form,  in  preference  to  the  dramatic.  It 
is  even  possible  that  a  few  isolated  passages  of  the  poem, 
as  it  now  stands,  may  have  been  written  before.     Of  one 


xtrr.]  PARADISE  LOST.  171 

such  passage  we  know  that  it  was  written  fifteen  or 
sixteen  years  before  1658,  and  while  he  was  still  con- 
templating a  drama.  The  lines  are  Satan's  speech,  P.  L. 
iv.  32,  beginning, — 

0,  thou  that  with  surpassing  glory  crowned. 

These  lines,  Phillips  says,  his  uncle  recited  to  him,  as 
forming  the  opening  of  his  tragedy.  They  are  modelled, 
as  the  classical  reader  will  perceive,  upon  Euripides. 
Possibly  they  were  not  intended  for  the  very  first  lines, 
since  if  Milton  intended  to  follow  the  practice  of  his  model, 
the  lofty  lyrical  tone  of  this  address  should  have  been 
introduced  by  a  prosaic  matter-of-fact  setting  forth  of  the 
situation,  as  in  the  Euripidean  prologue.  There  are  other 
passages  in  the  poem  which  have  the  air  of  being  insiti- 
tious  in  the  place  where  they  stand.  The  lilies  in  Book  iv, 
now  in  question,  may  reasonably  be  referred  to  1640-42, 
the  date  of  those  leaves  in  the  Trinity  College  MS.,  in 
which  Milton  has  written  down,  with  his  own  hand, 
various  sketches  of  tragedies,  which  might  possibly  be 
adopted  as  his  final  choice. 

A  passage  in  The  Reason  of  Church  Government,  written 
at  the  same  period,  1641,  gives  us  the  the  fullest  account 
of  his  hesitation.  It  was  a  hesitation  caused,  partly  by 
the  wealth  of  matter  which  his  reading  su""'ested  to  him, 
partly  by  the  consciousness  that  he  ought  not  to  begin  in 
haste  while  each  year  was  ripening  his  powers.  Every 
one  who  has  undertaken  a  work  of  any  length  has  made 
the  experience,  that  the  faculty  of  composition  will  not 
work  with  ease,  until  the  reason  is  satisfied  that  the  sub- 
ject chosen  is  a  congenial  one.  Gibbon  has  told  us  him- 
self of  the  many  periods  of  history  upon  which  he  tried 
his  pen,  even  after  the  memorable  15  October,  1764,  when 


172  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660-1674.  [chap. 

he  "sate  musing  amid  the  ruins  of  the  Capitol,  while  the 
hare-footed  friars  were  singing  vespers  in  the  temple  of 
Jupiter."  We  know  how  many  sketches  of  possible 
tragedies  Racine  would  make  before  he  could  adopt  one 
as  the  appropriate  theme,  on  which  he  could  work  with 
that  thorough  enjoyment  of  the  labour,  which  is  necessary 
to  give  life  and  verve  to  any  creation,  whether  of  the  poet 
or  the  orator. 

The  leaves  of  the  Trinity  College  MS.,  which  are  con- 
temporary with  his  confidence  to  the  readers  of  his  tract 
Of  Church  Government,  exhibit  a  list  of  nearly  one  hun- 
dred subjects,  which  had  occurred  to  him  from  time  to  time 
as  practicable  subjects.  From  the  mode  of  entry  we  see 
that,  already  in  1641,  a  scriptural  was  likely  to  have  the 
preference  over  a  profane  subject,  and  that  among  scriptural 
subjects  Paradise  Lost  (the  familiar  title  appears  in  this 
early  note),  stands  out  prominently  above  the  rest.  The 
historical  subjects  are  all  taken  from  native  history,  none 
are  foreign,  and  all  are  from  the  time  before  the  Eoman 
conquest.  The  scriptural  subjects  are  partly  from  the  Old, 
partly  from  the  New,  Testament.  Some  of  these  subjects 
are  named  and  nothing  more,  while  others  are  slightly 
sketched  out.  Among  these  latter  are  Baptistes,  on  the 
death  of  John  the  Baptist,  and  Christus  Patiens,  apparently 
to  be  confined  to  the  agony  in  the  garden.  Of  Paradise 
Lost  there  are  four  drafts  in  greater  detail  than  any  of  the 
others.  These  drafts  of  the  plot  or  action,  though  none 
of  them  that  which  was  finally  adopted,  are  sufficiently 
near  to  the  action  of  the  poem  as  it  stands,  to  reveal  to  us 
the  fact  that  the  author's  imaginative  conception  of  what 
he  intended  to  produce  was  generated,  cast,  and  moulded, 
at  a  comparatively  early  age.  The  commonly  received 
notion,  therefore,   with  which  authors,  as   they  age,  are 


xiii.]  PARADISE  LOST.  173 

wont  to  comfort  themselves,  that  one  of  the  greatest  feats 
of  original  invention  achieved  by  man,  was  begun  after 
fifty,  must  be  thus  far  modified.  Paradise  Lost  was  cum- 
X>osed  after  fifty,  but  was  conceived  at  thirty-two.  Hence 
the  high  degree  of  perfection  realised  in  the  total  result. 
For  there  were  combined  to  produce  it  the  opposite  virtues 
of  two  distinct  periods  of  mental  development ;  the  daring 
imagination  and  fresh  emotional  play  of  early  manhood, 
with  the  exercised  j  udgment  and  chastened  taste  of  ripened 
years.  "We  have  regarded  the  twenty-five  years  of  Milton's 
life  between  1641  and  the  commencement  of  Paradise 
Lost,  as  time  ill  laid  out  upon  inferior  work  which  any 
one  could  do,  and  which  was  not  worth  doing  by  any  one. 
Yet  it  may  be  made  a  question  if  in  any  other  mode  than 
by  adjournment  of  his  early  design,  Milton  could  have 
attained  to  that  union  of  original  strength  with  severe 
restraint,  which  distinguishes  from  all  other  poetry,  except 
that  of  Virgil,  the  three  great  poems  of  his  old  age.  If  the 
fatigue  of  age  is  sometimes  felt  in  Paradise  Regained,  we 
feel  in  Paradise  Lost  only  (in  the  words  of  Chateaubriand), 
"  la  maturite  de  l'age  a  travers  les  passions  des  legeres 
annees  ;  une  charme  extraordinaire  de  vieillesse  et  de 
jeunesse." 

A  still  further  inference  is  warranted  by  the  Trinity 
College  jottings  of  1641.  Not  the  critics  merely,  but 
readers  ready  to  sympathise,  have  been  sometimes  inclined 
to  wish  that  Milton  had  devoted  his  power  to  a  more 
human  subject,  in  which  the  poet's  invention  could  have 
had  freer  play,  and  for  which  his  reader's  interest  could 
have  been  more  ready.  And  it  has  been  thought  that  the 
choice  of  a  Biblical  subject  indicates  the  narrowing  effect 
of  age,  adversity,  and  blindness  combined.  We  now  know 
that  the  Fall  was  the  theme,  if  not  determined  on,  at 


174  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660-1G74.  [chap. 

least  predominant  in  Milton's  thoughts,  at  the  age  of 
thirty-two.  His  ripened  judgment  only  approved  a 
selection  made  in  earlier  years,  and  in  days  full  of  hope. 
That  in  selecting  a  scriptural  subject  he  was  not  in  fact 
exercising  any  choice,  but  was  determined  by  his  circum- 
stances, is  only  what  must  be  said  of  all  choosing.  With 
all  his  originality,  Milton  was  still  a  man  of  his  age.  A 
Puritan  poet,  in  a  Puritan  environment,  could  not  have 
done  otherwise.  But  even  had  choice  been  in  his  power, 
it  is  doubtful  if  he  would  have  had  the  same  success  with 
a  subject  taken  from  history. 

First,  looking  at  his  public.  He  was  to  write  in 
English.  This,  which  had  at  one  time  been  matter  of 
doubt,  had  at  an  early  stage  come  to  be  his  decision.  ]S"or 
had  the  choice  of  English  been  made  for  the  sake  of  popu- 
larity, which  he  despised.  He  did  not  desire  to  write  for 
the  many,  but  for  the  few.  But  he  was  enthusiastically 
patriotic.  He  had  intire  contempt  for  the  shouts  of  the 
mob,  but  the  English  nation,  as  embodied  in  the  persons 
of  the  wise  and  good,  he  honoured  and  reverenced  with  all 
the  depth  of  his  nature.  It  was  for  the  sake  of  his  nation 
that  he  was  to  devote  his  life  to  a  work,  which  was  to 
ennoble  her  tongue  among  the  languages  of  Europe. 

He  was  then  to  write  in  English,  for  the  English,  not 
popularly,  but  nationally.  This  resolution  at  once  limited 
his  subject.  He  who  aspires  to  be  the  poet  of  a  nation  is 
bound  to  adopt  a  hero  who  is  already  dear  to  that  people, 
to  choose  a  subject  and  characters  which  are  already 
familiar  to  them.  This  is  no  rule  of  literary  art 
arbitrarily  enacted  by  the  critics,  it  is  a  dictate  of  reason, 
and  has  been  the  practice  of  all  the  great  national  poets. 
The  more  obvious  examples  will  occur  to  every  reader. 
But  it  may  be  observed  that  even  the  Greek  tragedians, 


xm.]  PARADISE  LOST.  175 

who  addressed  a  more  limited  audience  than  the  epic  poets, 
took  their  plots  from  the  hest  known  legends  touching  the 
fortunes  of  the  royal  houses  of  the  Hellenic  race.  Now  to 
the  English  reader  of  the  seventeenth  century — and  the 
same  holds  good  to  this  day— there  were  only  two  cycles  of 
persons  and  events  sufficiently  known  beforehand  to  admit 
of  being  assumed  by  a  poet.  He  must  go  either  to  the 
Bible,  or  to  the  annals  of  England.  Thus  far  Milton's 
choice  of  subject  was  limited  by  the  consideration  of  the 
public  for  whom  he  wrote. 

Secondly,  he  was  still  farther  restricted  by  a  condition 
which  the  nature  of  his  own  intelligence  imposed  upon 
himself.  It  was  necessary  for  Milton  that  the  events  and 
personages,  which  were  to  arouse  and  detain  his  interests, 
should  be  real  events  and  personages.  The  mere  play  of 
fancy  with  the  pretty  aspects  of  things  could  not  satisfy  him; 
he  wanted  to  feel  beneath  him  a  substantial  world  of  reality. 
He  had  not  the  dramatist's  imagination  which  can  body 
forth  fictitious  characters  with  such  life-like  reality  that  it 
can,  and  does  itself,  believe  in  their  existence.  Macaulay 
has  truly  said  that  Milton's  genius  is  lyrical,  not  dramatic. 
His  lyre  will  only  echo  real  emotion,  and  his  imagination 
is  only  stirred  by  real  circumstances.  In  his  youth  he  had 
been  within  the  fascination  of  the  romances  of  chivalry,  as 
well  in  their  original  form,  as  in  the  reproductions  of 
Ariosto  and  Spenser.  While  under  this  influence  he  had 
thought  of  seeking  his  subject  among  the  heroes  of  these 
lays  of  old  minstrelsy.  And  as  one  of  his  principles  was 
that  his  hero  must  be  a  national  hero,  it  was  of  course 
upon  the  Arthurian  cycle  that  his  aspiration  fixed.  When 
he  did  so,  he  no  doubt  believed  at  least  the  historical 
existence  of  Arthur.  As  soon,  however,  as  he  came  to 
understand  the  fabulous  basis  of  the  Arthurian  legend, 


176  THIED  PERIOD.     1G60— 1674  [chap. 

it  became  unfitted  for  his  use.  In  the  Trinity  College 
MS.  of  1641,  Arthur  has  already  disappeared  from  the  list 
of  possible  subjects,  a  list  which  contains  thirty-eight  sug- 
gestions of  names  from  British  or  Saxon  history,  such  as 
Vortigern,  Edward  the  Confessor,  Harold,  Macbeth,  &c. 
While  he  demanded  the  basis  of  reality  for  his  person- 
ages, he  at  the  same  time,  with  a  true  instinct,  rejected  all 
that  fell  within  the  period  of  well-ascertained  history.  Ho 
made  the  Conquest  the  lower  limit  of  his  choice.  In  this 
negative  decision  against  historical  romance  we  recognise 
Milton's  judgment,  and  his  correct  estimate  of  his  own 
powers.  Those  who  have  been  thought  to  succeed  best  in 
engrafting  fiction  upon  history,  Shakspeare  or  Walter 
Scott,  have  been  eminently  human  poets,  and  have 
achieved  their  measure  of  success  by  investing  some  well- 
known  name  with  the  attributes  of  ordinary  humanity 
such  as  we  all  know  it.  This  was  precisely  what  Milton 
could  not  have  done.  He  had  none  of  that  sympathy  with 
which  Shakspeare  embraced  all  natural  and  common 
affections  of  his  brother  men.  Milton,  burning  as  he  did 
with  a  consuming  fire  of  passion,  and  yearning  for  rapt 
communion  with  select  souls,  had  withal  an  aloofness  from 
ordinary  men  and  women,  and  a  proud  disdain  of  common- 
place joy  and  sorrow,  which  has  led  hasty  biographers  and 
critics  to  represent  him  as  hard,  austere,  an  iron  man  of 
iron  mould.  This  want  of  interest  in  common  life  disquali- 
fied him  for  the  task  of  revivifying  historic  scenes. 

Milton's  mental  constitution,  then,  demanded  in  the 
material  upon  which  it  was  to  work,  a  combination  of 
qualities  such  as  very  few  subjects  could  offer.  The 
events  and  personages  must  be  real  and  substantial,  for  he 
could  not  occupy  himself  seriously  with  airy  nothings  and 


xiii.]  PAEADISB  LOST.  177 

creatures  of  pure  fancy.  Yet  they  must  not  "be  such, 
events  and  personages  as  history  had  pourtrayed  to  us 
with  well-known  characters,  and  all  their  virtues,  faults, 
foibles,  and  peculiarities.  And,  lastly,  it  was  requisite 
that  they  should  be  the  common  property  and  the  familiar 
interest  of  a  wide  circle  of  English  readers. 

These  being  the  conditions  required  in  the  subject,  it  is 
obvious  that  no  choice  was  left  to  the  poet  in  the  England 
of  the  seventeenth  century  but  a  biblical  subject.  And 
among  the  many  picturesque  episodes  which  the  Hebrew 
Scriptures  present,  the  narrative  of  the  Fall  stands  out 
with  a  character  of  all-emhracing  comprehensiveness  which 
belongs  to  no  other  single  event  in  the  Jewish  annals. 
The  first  section  of  the  book  of  Genesis  clothes  in  a  dra- 
matic form  the  dogmatic  idea  from  which  was  developed 
in  the  course  of  ages  the  whole  scheme  of  Judaico- 
Christian  anthropology.  In  this  world-drama,  Heaven 
above  and  Hell  beneath,  the  powers  of  light  and  those  of 
darkness,  are  both  brought  upon  the  scene  in  conflict  with 
each  other,  over  the  fate  of  the  inhabitants  of  our  globe, 
a  minute  ball  of  matter  suspended  between  two  infinities. 
This  gigantic  and  unmanageable  material  is  so  completely 
mastered  by  the  poet's  imagination,  that  we  are  made  to 
feel  at  one  and  the  same  time  the  petty  dimensions  of  our 
earth  in  comparison  with  primordial  space  and  almighty 
power,  and  the  profound  import  to  us  of  the  issue  depend- 
ing on  the  conflict.  Other  poets,  of  inferior  powers,  have 
from  time  to  time  attempted,  with  different  degrees  of 
success,  some  of  the  minor  Scriptural  histories  ;  Bodmer, 
the  Noachian  Deluge ;  Solomon  Gessner,  the  Death  of 
Abel,  &c.  And  Milton  himself,  after  he  had  spent  his 
full  strength  upon  his  greater  theme,  recurred  in  Samson 
Agonistes  to  one  such  episode,  which  he  had  deliberately 

N 


178  THIRD  PERIOD.     1GG0-1G74.  [chap. 

set  aside  before,  as  not  giving  verge  enough  for  the  sweep 
of  his  soaring  conception. 

These  considerations  duly  weighed,  it  will  be  found 
that  the  subject  of  the  Fall  of  Man  was  not  so  much 
Milton's  choice  as  his  necessity.  Among  all  the  traditions 
of  the  peoples  of  the  earth,  there  is  not  extant  another 
story  which  could  have  been  adequate  to  his  demands. 
Biographers  may  have  been  somewhat  misled  by  his 
speaking  of  himself  as  "long  choosing  and  beginning 
late."  He  did  not  begin  till  1658,  when  he  was 
already  fifty,  and  it  has  been  somewhat  hastily  inferred 
that  he  did  not  choose  till  the  date  at  which  he  began. 
But,  as  we  have  seen,  he  had  already  chosen  at  least  as 
early  as  1642,  when  the  plan  of  a  drama  on  the  subject, 
and  under  the  title,  of  Paradise  Lost  was  fully  developed. 
In  the  interval  between  1642  and  1658.  he  changed  the 
form  from  a  drama  to  an  epic,  but  his  choice  remained 
unaltered.  And  as  the  address  to  the  sun  ( Paradise  Lost, 
iv.  32)  was  composed  at  the  earlier  of  these  dates,  it 
appears  that  he  had  already  formulated  even  the  rhythm 
and  cadence  of  the  poem  that  was  to  be.  Like  Words- 
worth's "  "Warrior  " — 

He  wrought 
Upon  the  plan  that  pleas'd  his  boyish  thought. 

I  have  said  that  this  subject  of  the  Fall  was  Milton's 
necessity,  being  the  only  subject  which  his  mind,  "in  the 
spacious  circuits  of  her  musing,"  found  large  enough. 
But  as  it  was  no  abrupt  or  arbitrary  choice,  so  it  was  not 
forced  upon  him  from  without,  by  suggestion  of  friends,  or 
command  of  a  patron.  We  must  again  remind  ourselves 
that  Milton  had  a  Calvinistic  bringing  up.  And  Cal- 
vinism in  pious  Puritan  souls  of  that  fervent  age  was  not 
the  attenuated  creed  of  the  eighteenth  century,  the  Cal- 
vinism which  went  not  beyond  personal  gratification  of 


xiu.]  PARADISE  LOST.  179 

safety  for  oneself,  and  for  the  rest  damnation.  When 
Milton  was  being  reared,  Calvinism  was  not  old  and  effete, 
a  mere  doctrine.  It  was  a  living  system  of  thought,  and 
one  which  carried  the  mind  upwards  towards  the  Eternal 
will,  rather  than  downwards  towards  my  personal  security. 
Keble  has  said  of  the  old  Catholic  views,  founded  on  sac- 
ramental symbolism,  that  they  are  more  poetical  than  any 
other  religious  conception.  But  it  must  be  acknowledged 
that  a  predestinarian  scheme,  leading  the  cogitation  up- 
ward to  dwell  upon  "  the  heavenly  things  before  the 
foundation  of  the  world,"  opens  a  vista  of  contemplation 
and  poetical  framework,  with  which  none  other  in  the 
whole  cycle  of  human  thought  can  compare.  Not  election 
and  reprobation  as  set  out  in  the  petty  chicanery  of  Cal- 
vin's Institutes,  but  the  prescience  of  absolute  wisdom 
revolving  all  the  possibilities  of  time,  space,  and  matter. 
Poetry  has  been  defined  as  "  the  suggestion  by  the  image 
of  noble  grounds  for  noble  emotions,"  and,  in  this  respect, 
none  of  the  world-epics — there  are  at  most  five  or  six  such 
in  existence — can  compete  with  Paradise  Lost.  The 
melancholy  pathos  of  Lucretius  indeed  pierces  the  heart 
with  a  two-edged  sword  more  keen  than  Milton's,  but  the 
compass  of  Lucretius'  horizon  is  much  less,  being  limited 
to  this  earth  and  its  inhabitants.  The  horizon  of  Paradise 
Lost  is  not  narrower  than  all  space,  its  chronology  not 
shorter  than  eternity ;  the  globe  of  our  earth  becomes  a 
mere  spot  in  the  physical  universe,  and  that  universe 
itself  a  drop  suspended  in  the  infinite  empyrean.  His 
aspiration  had  thus  reached  "  one  of  the  highest  arcs  that 
human  contemplation  circling  upwards  can  make  from 
the  glassy  sea  whereon  she  stands"  (Doctr.  and  Disc). 
Like  his  contemporary  Pascal,  his  mind  had  beaten  her 
wings  against  the  prison  walls  of  human  thought. 

The   vastness  of  the  scheme   of  Paradise   Lost   may 

n  2 


180  TIIIRD  PERIOD.     1G60— 1674.  [chap. 

become  more  apparent  to  us  if  we  remark  that,  within  its 
embrace,  there  seems  to  be  equal  place  for  both  the 
systems  of  physical  astronomy  which  were  current  in  the 
seventeenth  century.  In  England,  about  the  time  Para- 
dise Lost  was  being  written,  the  Copernican  theory,  which 
placed  the  sun  in  the  centre  of  our  system,  was  already 
the  established  belief  of  the  few  well-informed.  The  old 
Ptolemaic  or  Alphonsine  system,  which  explained  the 
phenomena  on  the  hypothesis  of  nine  (or  ten)  transparent 
hollow  spheres  wheeling  round  the  stationary  earth,  was 
still  the  received  astronomy  of  ordinary  people.  These 
two  beliefs,  the  one  based  on  science,  though  stdl  wanting 
the  calculation  which  Newton  was  to  supply  to  make  it 
demonstrative,  the  other  supported  by  the  tradition  of 
ages,  were,  at  the  time  we  speak  of,  in  presence  of  each 
other  in  the  public  mind.  They  are  in  presence  of  each 
other  also  in  Milton's  epic.  And  the  systems  confront 
each  other  in  the  poem,  in  much  the  same  relative  posi- 
tion which  they  occupied  in  the  mind  of  the  public.  The 
ordinary,  habitual  mode  of  speaking  of  celestial  pheno- 
mena is  Ptolemaic  (see  Paradise  Lost,  vii.  339  ;  iii.  481). 
The  conscious,  or  doctrinal,  exposition  of  the  same  pheno- 
mena is  Copernican  (see  Paradise  Lost,  viii.  122).  Sharp 
as  is  the  contrast  between  the  two  systems,  the  one  being 
the  direct  contradictory  of  the  other,  they  are  lodged 
together,  not  harmonised,  within  the  vast  circuit  of  the 
poet's  imagination.  The  precise  mechanism  of  an  object 
so  little  as  is  our  world  in  comparison  with  the  immense 
totality  may  be  justly  disregarded.  "De  minimis  non 
curat  poeta."  In  the  universe  of  being  the  difference 
between  a  heliocentric  and  a  geocentric  theory  of  our 
solar  system  is  of  as  small  moment,  as  the  reconcilement  of 
fixed  fate,    free-will,  foreknowledge    absolute    is    in    the 


xiii.]  PAEADISE  LOST.  181 

realm  of  absolute  intelligence.     The  one  is  the  frivolous 
pastime  of  devils  ;  the  other  the  Great  Architect 

Hath  left  to  their  disputes,  perhaps  to  move 
His  laughter  at  their  quaint  opinions  wide. 

As  one,  and  the  principal,  inconsistency  in  Milton's 
presentment  of  his  matter  has  now  been  mentioned,  a 
general  remark  may  be  made  upon  the  conceptual  in- 
congruities in  Paradise  Lost.  The  poem  abounds  in  such, 
and  the  critics,  from  Addison  downwards,  have  busied 
themselves  in  finding  out  more  and  more  of  them.  Mil- 
ton's geography  of  the  world  is  as  obscure  and  untenable 
as  that  of  Herodotus.  The  notes  of  time  cannot  stand 
together.  To  give  an  example  :  Eve  says  [Paradise  Lost, 
iv.  449)— 

That  day  I  oft  remember,  when  from  sleep 
I  first  awak'd. 

But  in  the  chronology  of  the  poem,  Adam  himself,  whose 
creation  preceded  that  of  Eve,  was  but  three  days  old  at 
the  time  this  reminiscence  is  repeated  to  him.  The  mode 
in  which  the  Son  of  God  is  spoken  of  is  not  either  con- 
sistent Athanasianism  or  consistent  Arianism.  Above 
all  there  is  an  incessant  confusion  of  material  and  im- 
material in  the  acts  ascribed  to  the  angels.  Dr.  Johnson, 
who  wished  for  consistency,  would  have  had  it  preserved 
"  by  keeping  immateriality  out  of  sight."  And  a  general 
arraignment  has  been  laid  against  Milton  of  a  vagueness 
and  looseness  of  imagery,  Avhich  contrasts  unfavourably 
with  the  vivid  and  precise  detail  of  other  poets,  of 
Homer  or  of  Dante,  for  example. 

Now  first,  it  must  be  said  that  Milton  is  not  one  of  the 
poets  of  inaccurate  imagination.     He  could  never,  like 


182  THIRD  PERIOD.     16G0— 167i.  [chap. 

Scott,  have  let  the  precise  picture  of  the  swan  on  "  still 
Saint  Mary's  lake"  slip  into  the  namby-pamby  "sweet 
Saint  Mary's  lake."  "When  he  intends  a  picture,  he  is 
unmistakably  distinct ;  his  outline  is  fiiin  and  hard. 
But  he  is  not  often  intending  pictures.  He  is  not,  like 
Dante,  always  seeing — he  is  mostly  thinking  in  a  dream, 
or  as  Coleridge  best  expressed  it,  he  is  not  a  picturesque, 
but  a  musical  poet.  The  pictures  in  Paradise  Lost  are 
like  the  paintings  on  the  walls  of  some  noble  hall  — only 
part  of  the  total  magnificence.  He  did  not  aim  at  that 
finish  of  minute  parts  in  which  each  bit  fits  into  every 
other.  For  it  was  only  by  such  disregard  of  minutiae  that 
the  theme  could  be  handled  at  all.  The  impression  of 
vastness,  the  sense  that  everything,  as  Bishop  Butler  says, 
"  runs  up  into  infinity,"  would  have  been  impaired  if  he 
had  drawn  attention  to  the  details  of  his  figures.  Had  he 
had  upon  his  canvas  only  a  single  human  incident,  with 
ordinary  human  agents,  he  would  have  known,  as  well  as 
other  far  inferior  artists,  how  to  secure  perfection  of  illu- 
sion by  exactness  of  detail.  But  he  had  undertaken  to 
present,  not  the  world  of  human  experience,  but  a  super- 
natural world,  peopled  by  supernatural  beings,  God  and 
his  Son,  angels  and  archangels,  devils  ;  a  world  in  which 
Sin  and  Death  may  be  personified  without  palpable 
absurdity.  Even  his  one  human  pair  are  exceptional 
beings,  from  whom  we  are  prepared  not  to  demand  con- 
formity to  the  laws  of  life  which  now  prevail  in  our 
world.  Had  he  presented  all  these  spiritual  personages 
in  definite  form  to  the  eye,  the  result  would  have  been 
degradation.  We  should  have  had  the  ridiculous  instead 
of  the  sublime,  as  in  the  scene  of  the  Iliad,  where  Diomede 
wounds  Aphrodite  in  the  hand,  and  sends  her  crying  home 
to  her  father.     Once  or  twice  Milton  has  ventured  too 


xin.]  PARADISE  LOST.  183 

near  the  limit  of  material  adaptation,  trying  to  explain 
Itoiv  angelic  natures  subsist,  as  in  the  passage  [Paradise 
Lost,  v.  405)  where  Raphael  tells  Adam  that  angels  eat 
and  digest  food  like  man.  Taste  here  receives  a  shock, 
because  the  incongruity,  which  before  was  latent,  is  forced 
upon  our  attention.  We  are  threatened  with  being  trans- 
ported out  of  the  conventional  world  of  Heaven,  Hell, 
Chaos,  and  Paradise,  to  which  we  had  well  adapted  our- 
selves, into  the  real  world  in  which  we  know  that  such 
beings  could  not  breathe  and  move. 

For  the  world  of  Paradise  Lost  is  an  ideal,  conventional 
world,  quite  as  much  as  the  world  of  the  Arabian  Nights, 
or  the  world  of  the  chivalrous  romance,  or  that  of  the 
pastoral  novel.  Wot  only  dramatic,  but  all,  poetry  is 
founded  on  illusion.  We  must,  though  it  be  but  for  the 
moment,  suppose  it  true.  We  must  be  transported  out  of 
the  actual  world  into  that  world  in  which  the  given  scene 
is  laid.  It  is  chiefly  the  business  of  the  poet  to  effect  this 
transportation,  but  the  reader  (or  hearer)  must  aid.  "  Willst 
du  Dichter  ganz  verstehen,  musst  in  Dichter's  Lande 
gehen."  If  the  reader's  imagination  is  not  active  enough 
to  assist  the  poet,  he  must  at  least  not  resist  him.  When 
we  are  once  inside  the  poet's  heaven,  our  critical  faculty 
may  justly  require  that  what  takes  place  there  shall  be 
consistent  with  itself,  with  the  laws  of  that  fantastic 
world.  But  we  may  not  begin  by  objecting  that  it  is 
impossible  that  such  a  world  should  exist.  If,  in  any 
age,  the  power  of  imagination  is  enfeebled,  the  reader 
becomes  more  unable  to  make  this  effort ;  he  ceases  to 
co-operate  with  the  poet.  Much  of  the  criticism  on  Para- 
dise  Lost  which  we  meet  with  resolves  itself  into  a  refusal 
on  the  part  of  the  critic,  to  make  that  initial  abondonment 
to  the  conditions  which  the  poet  demands ;  a  determina- 


184  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660—1674.  [chap. 

tion  to  insist  that  his  heaven,  peopled  with  deities,  domi- 
nations, principalities,  and  powers,  shall  have  the  same 
material  laws  which  govern  our  planetary  system.  It  is 
not,  as  we  often  hear  it  said,  that  the  critical  faculty  is 
unduly  developed  in  the  nineteenth  century.  It  is  that 
the  imaginative  faculty  fails  us  ;  and  when  that  is  the 
case,  criticism  is  powerless — it  has  no  fundamental  as- 
sumption upon  which  its  judgments  can  proceed. 

It  is  the  triumph  of  Milton's  skill  to  have  made  his 
ideal  world  actual,  if  not  to  every  English  mind's  eye,  yet 
to  a  larger  numher  of  minds  than  have  ever  "been  reached 
by  any  other  poetry  in  our  language.  Popular  (in  the 
common  use  of  the  word)  Milton  has  not  been,  and  cannot 
be.  But  the  world  he  created  has  taken  possession  of 
the  public  mind.  Huxley  complains  that  the  false 
cosmogony,  which  will  not  yield  to  the  conclusions  of 
scientific  research,  is  derived  from  the  seventh  book  of 
Paradise  Lost,  rather  than  from  Genesis.  This  success 
Milton  owes  partly  to  his  selection  of  his  subject,  partly 
to  his  skill  in  handling  it.  In  his  handling,  he  presents 
his  spiritual  existences  with  just  so  much  relief  as  to 
endow  them  with  life  and  personality,  and  not  with  that 
visual  distinctness  which  would  at  once  reveal  their 
spectral  immateriality,  and  so  give  a  shock  to  the  illusion. 
We  might  almost  say  of  his  personages  that  they  are 
shapes,  "  if  shape  it  might  be  called,  that  shape  had 
none."  By  his  art  of  suggestion  by  association,  he  does 
all  he  can  to  aid  us  to  realise  his  agents,  and  at  the 
moment  when  distinctness  would  disturb,  lie  withdraws 
the  object  into  a  mist,  and  so  disguises  the  incongruities 
which  he  could  not  avoid.  The  tact  that  avoids 
difficulties  inherent  in  the  nature  of  things,  is  an  art 
which  gets  the  least  appreciation  either  in  life  or  in  litcra- 


xiii.]  PAEADISE  LOST.  185 

ture.  Bat  if  we  would  have  some  measure  of  the  skill 
Avhich  in  Paradise  Lost  has  made  impossible  beings 
possible  to  the  imagination,  we  may  find  it  in  contrasting 
them  with  the  incarnated  abstraction  and  spirit  voices, 
which  we  encounter  at  every  turn  in  Shelley,  creatures 
who  leave  behind  them  no  more  distinct  impression  than 
that  we  have  been  in  a  dream  peopled  with  ghosts. 
Shelley,  too, 

Voyag'd  th'  unreal,  vast,  unbounded  deep 
Of  horrible  confusion. 

Paradise  Lost,  x,  470. 

and  left  it  the  chaos  which  he  found  it.  Milton  has 
elicited  from  similar  elements  a  conception  so  life-like 
that  his  poetical  version  has  inseparably  grafted  itself  upon, 
if  it  has  not  taken  the  place  of,  the  historical  narrative  of 
the  original  creation. 

So  much  Milton  has  effected  by  his  skilful  treatment. 
But  the  illusion  was  greatly  facilitated  by  his  choice  of 
subject.  He  had  not  to  create  his  supernatural  personages, 
they  were  already  there.  The  Father,  and  the  Son,  the 
Angels,  Satan,  Baal  and  Moloch,  Adam  and  Eve,  were  in 
full  possession  of  the  popular  imagination,  and  more 
familiar  to  it  than  any  other  set  of  known  names.  Nor 
was  the  belief  accorded  to  them  a  half  belief,  a  bare  ad- 
mission of  their  possible  existence,  such  as  prevails  at 
other  times  or  in  some  countries.  In  the  England  of 
Milton,  the  angels  and  devils  of  the  Jewish  Scriptures  were 
more  real  beings,  and  better  vouched,  than  any  historical 
personages  could  be.  The  old  chronicles  were  full  of  lies, 
but  this  was  Bible  truth.  There  might  very  likely  have 
been  a  Henry  VIII. ,  and  he  might  have  been  such  as  he 
is  described,  but  at  any  rate  he  was  dead  and  gone,  while 


186  THIRD  PERIOD.     1G60— 1674.  [chap. 

Satan  still  lived  and  walked  the  earth,  the  identical  Satan 
who  had  deceived  Eve. 

Nor  was  it  only  to  the  poetic  public  that  his  personages 
were  real,  true,  and  living  beings.     The  poet  himself  be- 
lieved as  entirely  in  their  existence  as  did  his  readers.     I 
insist  upon  this  point,  because  one  of  the  first  of  living 
critics  has  declared  of  Paradise  Lost  that  it  is  a  poem  in 
which  every  artifice  of  invention  is  consciously  employed, 
not  a  single  fact  being,  for  an  instant,  conceived  as  tenable 
by  any  living  faith.     (Euskin,  Sesame  and  Lilies,  p.  138). 
On  the  contrary,  we  shall  not  rightly  apprehend  either  the 
poetry  or  the  character  of  the  poet  until  we  feel  that 
tlrroughout  Paradise  Lost,  as  in  Paradise  Regained  and 
Samson,  Milton  felt  himself  to  be  standing  on  the  sure 
ground  of  fact  and  reality.     It  was  not  in  Milton's  nature 
to  be  a  showman,  parading  before  an  audience  a  phantas- 
magoria of  spirits,  which  he  himself  knew  to  be  puppets 
tricked  up  for  the  entertainment  of  an  idle  hour.     We  are 
told  by  Lockhart,  that  the  old  man  who  told  the  story  of 
Gilpin  Horner  to  Lady  Dalkeith  bond  fide  believed  the 
existence  of  the  elf.     Lady  Dalkeith  repeated  the  tale  to 
Walter  Scott,  who  worked  it  up  with  consummate  skill 
into  the  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel.     This  is  a  case  of  a 
really  believed  legend  of  diablerie  becoming  the  source  of 
a  literary  fiction.     Scott  neither  believed  in  the  reality  of 
the  goblin  page  himself,  nor  expected  his  readers  to  believe 
it.     He  could  not  rise  beyond  the  poetry  of  amusement, 
and  no  poetry  with  only  this  motive  can  ever  be  more  than 
literary  art. 

Other  than  this  was  Milton's  conception  of  his  own 
function.  Of  the  fashionable  verse,  such  as  was  written 
in  the  Caroline  age,  or  in  any  age,  he  disapproved,  not  only 
because  it  was  imperfect  art,  but  because  it  was  untrue 


xni.]  PARADISE  LOST.  187 

utterance.  Poems  that  were  raised  "from  the  heat  of 
youth,  or  the  vapours  of  wine,  like  that  which  flows  at 
waste  from  the  pen  of  some  vulgar  amourist,  or  the 
trencher  fury  of  a  rhyming  parasite,"  were  in  his  eyes 
treachery  to  the  poet's  high  vocation. 

Poetical  powers  "  are  the  inspired  gift  of  God  rarely  bestowed 
...  in  every  nation,  and  are  of  power,  beside  the  office  of  a  pulpit, 
to  imbreed  and  cherish  in  a  great  people  the  seeds  of  virtue  and 
public  civility,  to  allay  the  perturbation  of  the  mind,  and  set  the 
affections  in  right  tune ;  to  celebrate  in  glorious  and  lofty 
hymns  the  throne  and  equipage  of  God's  almightiness,  and  what 
he  works,  and  what  he  suffers  to  be  wrought  with  high  providence 
in  bis  church ;  to  sing  victorious  agonies  of  martyrs  and  saints, 
the  deeds  and  triumphs  of  just  and  pious  nations,  doing  valiantly 
through  faith  against  the  enemies  of  Christ ;  to  deplore  the 
general  relapses  of  kingdoms  and  states  from  justice  and  God's 
true  worship." 

So  he  had  written  in  1642,  and  this  lofty  faith  in  his 
calling  supported  him  twenty  years  later,  in  the  arduous 
labour  of  his  attempt  to  realise  his  own  ideal.  In  setting 
himself  down  to  compose  Paradise  Lost  and  Regained,  he 
regarded  himself  not  as  an  author,  but  as  a  medium, 
the  mouthpiece  of  "  that  eternal  Spirit  who  can  enrich 
with  all  utterance  and  all  knowledge  :  Urania,  heavenly 
muse,"  visits  him  nightly, 

And  dictates  to  me  slumb'ring,  or  inspires 
Easy  my  unpremeditated  verse. 

Paradise  Lost,  ix.  21. 

Urania  bestows  the  flowing  words  and  musical  sweetness  ; 
to  God's  Spirit  he  looks  to 

Shine  inward,  and  the  mind  through  all  her  powers 
Irradiate,  there  plant  eyes,  all  mist  from  thence 


1S8  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660-1674  [ciiap. 

Purge  and  disperse,  that  I  may  see  and  tell 
Of  things  invisible  to  mortal  sight. 

Paradise  Lost,  iii.  50. 

The  singers  with  whom  he  would  fain  equal  himself  are 
not  Dante,  or  Tasso,  or,  as  Dryden  would  have  it,  Spenser, 
hut 

Blind  Thamyris,  and  blind  Maeonides, 
And  Tiresias  and  Phineus,  prophets  old. 

As  he  is  equalled  with  these  in  misfortune— loss  of  sight 
—  he  would  emulate  them  in  function.  Orpheus  and 
Musaeus  are  the  poets  he  would  fain  have  as  the  com- 
panions of  his  midnight  meditation  (Penseroso).  And 
the  function  of  the  poet  is  like  that  of  the  prophet  in  the 
old  dispensation,  not  to  invent,  but  to  utter.  It  is  God's 
truth  which  passes  his  lips— lips  hallowed  by  the  touch 
of  sacred  fire.  He  is  the  passive  instrument  through 
whom  flows  the  emanation  from  on  high ;  his  words  are 
not  his  own,  but  a  suggestion.  Even  for  style  Milton  is 
indebted  to  his  "celestial  patroness  who  deigns  her 
nightly  visitation  unimplor'd." 

Milton  was  not  dependent  upon  a  dubious  tradition  in 
the  subject  he  had  selected.  Man's  fall  and  recovery  were 
recorded  in  the  Scriptures.  And  the  two  media  of  truth, 
the  internal  and  the  external,  as  deriving  from  the  same 
source,  must  needs  be  in  harmony.  That  the  Spirit  en- 
lightens the  mind  within,  in  this  belief  the  Puritan  saint, 
the  poet,  and  the  prophet,  who  all  met  in  Milton,  were  at 
one.  That  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures  were  also  a  reve- 
lation from  God,  was  an  article  of  faith  which  he  had  never 
questioned.  Nor  did  he  only  receive  these  books  as  con- 
veying in  substance  a  divine  view  of  the  world's  history, 
lie  regarded  them  as  in  the  letter  a  transcript  of  fact. 


xiii  ]  PARADISE  LOST.  189 

If  the  poet-prophet  would  tell  the  story  of  creation  or 
redemption,  he  was  thus  restrained  not  only  by  the  general 
outline  and  imagery  of  the  Bible,  but  by  its  very  words. 
And  here  we  must  note  the  skill  of  the  poet  in  surmount- 
ing an  added  or  artificial  difficulty,  in  the  subject  he  had 
chosen  as  combined  with  his  notion  of  inspiration.  He 
must  not  deviate  in  a  single  syllable  from  the  words  of 
the  Hebrew  books.  He  must  take  up  into  his  poem  the 
whole  of  the  sacred  narrative.  This  he  must  do,  not 
merely  because  his  readers  would  expect  such  literal 
accuracy  from  him,  but  because  to  himself  that  narrative 
was  the  very  truth  which  he  was  undertaking  to  deliver. 
The  additions  which  his  fancy  or  inspiration  might  supply 
must  be  restrained  by  this  severe  law,  that  they  should  bo 
such  as  to  aid  the  reader's  imagination  to  conceive  how 
the  event  took  place.  They  must  by  no  means  be  suffered 
to  alter,  disfigure,  traduce  the  substance  or  the  letter  of  the 
revelation.  This  is  what  Milton  has  done.  He  has  told 
the  story  of  creation  in  the  very  words  of  Scripture. 
The  whole  of  the  seventh  book,  is  little  more  than  a 
paraphrase  of  a  few  verses  of  Genesis.  What  he  has 
added  is  so  little  incongruous  with  his  original,  that 
most  English  men  and  women  would  probably  have 
some  difficulty  in  discriminating  in  recollection  the  part 
they  derive  from  Moses,  from  that  which  they  have  added 
from  the  paraphrast.  In  Genesis  it  is  the  serpent  who 
tempts  Eve,  in  virtue  of  his  natural  wiliness.  In  Milton 
it  is  Satan  who  has  entered  into  the  body  of  a  serpent, 
and  supplied  the  intelligence.  Here  indeed  Milton  was 
only  adopting  a  gloss,  as  ancient  at  least  as  the  Book  of 
Wisdom  (ii.  24).  But  it  is  the  gloss,  and  not  the  text  of 
Moses,  which  is  in  possession  of  our  minds,  and  who  has 
done  most  to  lodge  it  there,  Milton  or  the  commentators  1 


190  TIIIRD  PERIOD.     1GG0— 1671.  [chap. 

Again,  it  is  Milton  and  not  Moses  who  makes  the  serpent 
pluck  and  eat  the  first  apple  from  the  tree.  But  Bp. 
Wilson  comments  upon  the  words  of  Genesis  (hi.  6)  as 
though  they  contained  this  purely  Miltonic  circumstance. 

It  could  hardly  but  be  that  one  oi  two  of  the  incidents 
which  Milton  has  supplied,  the  popular  imagination  has 
been  unable  to  homologate.  Such  an  incident  is  the 
placing  of  artillery  in  the  wars  in  heaven.  "VVe  reject 
this  suggestion,  and  find  it  mars  probability.  But  it 
would  not  seem  so  improbable  to  Mdton's  contemporaries, 
not  only  because  it  was  an  article  of  the  received  poetic 
tradition  (see  Ronsard  G,  p.  40),  but  also  because  fire-arms 
had  not  quite  ceased  to  be  regarded  as  a  devilish  enginery 
of  a  new  warfare,  unfair  in  the  knightly  code  of  honour, 
a  base  substitute  of  mechanism  for  individual  valour.  It 
was  gunpowder  and  not  Don  Quixote  which  had  destroyed 
the  age  of  chivalry. 

Another  of  Milton's  fictions  which  has  been  found 
too  grotesque  is  the  change  (P.  L.,  x.  508)  of  the  demons 
into  serpents,  who  hiss  their  Prince  on  his  return  from  his 
embassy.  Here  it  is  not,  I  think,  so  much  the  unnatural 
character  of  the  incident  itself,  as  its  gratuitousness 
which  offends.  It  does  not  help  us  to  conceive  the 
situation.  A  suggestion  of  Chateaubriand  may  therefore 
go  some  way  towards  reconciling  the  reader  even  to  this 
caprice  of  imagination.  It  indicates,  he  says,  the  degra- 
dation of  Satan,  who,  from  the  superb  Intelligence  of  the 
early  scenes  of  the  poem,  is  become  at  its  close  a  hideous 
reptile.  He  has  not  triumphed,  but  has  failed,  and  is 
degraded  into  the  old  dragon,  who  haunts  among  the 
damned.  The  bruising  of  his  head  has  already  com- 
menced. 

The   bridge,  again,  which    Sin    and    Death  construct 


xiii.]  TAKADISE  KEGAINED.  101 

{Paradise  Lost,  x.  300),  leading  from  the  mouth  of  hell 
to  the  wall  of  the  world,  has  a  chilling  effect  upon  the 
imagination  of  a  modern  reader.  It  does  not  assist  the 
conception  of  the  cosmical  system  which  we  accept  in  the 
earlier  books.  This  clumsy  fiction  seems  more  at  home 
in  the  grotesque  and  lawless  mythology  of  the  Turks,  or 
in  the  Persian  poet  Sadi,  who  is  said  by  Marmontel  to 
have  adopted  it  from  the  Turk.  If  Milton's  intention 
were  to  reproduce  Jacob's  ladder,  he  should,  like  Dante 
{Farad,  xxi.  25),  have  made  it  the  means  of  commu- 
nication between  heaven  and  earth. 

It  is  possible  that  Milton  himself,  after  the  experiment 
of  Paradise  Lost  was  fully  before  him,  suspected  that  he 
had  supplemented  too  much  for  his  purpose ;  that  his 
imagery,  which  was  designed  to  illustrate  history,  might 
stand  in  its  light.  For  in  the  composition  of  Paradise 
Regained  (published  1671)  he  has  adopted  a  much  severer 
style.  In  this  poem  he  has  not  only  curbed  his  imagi- 
nation, but  has  almost  suppressed  it.  He  has  amplified, 
but  has  hardly  introduced  any  circumstance  which  is  not 
in  the  original.  Paradise  Regained  is  little  more  than  a 
paraphrase  of  the  Temptation  as  found  in  the  synoptical 
gospels.  It  is  a  marvel  of  ingenuity  that  more  than  two 
thousand  lines  of  blank  verse  can  have  been  constructed 
out  of  some  twenty  lines  of  prose,  without  the  addition  of 
any  invented  incident,  or  the  insertion  of  any  irrelevant 
digression.  In  the  first  three  books  of  Paradise  Regained 
there  is  not  a  single  simile.  Nor  yet  can  it  be  said  that 
the  version  of  the  gospel  narrative  has  the  faidt  of  most 
paraphrases,  viz.,  that  of  weakening  the  effect,  and  ob- 
literating the  chiselled  features  of  the  original.  Let  a 
reader  take  Paradise  Regained  not  as  a  theme  used  as  a 
canvas  for  poetical  embroidery,  an  opportunity  for  an  author 


192  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660—1674.  [ciiap. 

to  show  off  his  powers  of  writing,  hut  as  a  bond  fide  attempt 
to  impress  upon  the  mind  the  story  of  the  Temptation, 
and  he  will  acknowledge  the  concealed  art  of  the  genuine 
epic  poet,  hent  before  all  things  upon  telling  his  tale.  It 
will  still  he  capable  of  being  alleged  that  the  story  told 
does  not  interest ;  that  the  composition  is  dry,  hard, 
barren ;  the  style  as  of  set  purpose  divested  of  the  attri- 
butes of  poetry.  It  is  not  necessary  indeed  that  an  epic 
should  be  in  twelve  boots;  but  we  do  demand  in  an 
epic  poem  multiplicity  of  character  and  variety  of  in- 
cident. In  Paradise  Regained  there  are  only  two  per- 
sonages, both  of  whom  are  supernatural.  Indeed,  they 
can  scarcely  be  called  personages ;  the  poet,  in  his  fidelity 
to  the  letter,  not  having  thought  fit  to  open  up  the  fertile 
vein  of  delineation  which  was  afforded  by  the  human 
character  of  Christ.  The  speakers  are  no  more  than  the 
abstract  principles  of  good  and  evil,  two  voices  who  hold 
a  rhetorical  disputation  through  four  books  and  two 
thousand  lines. 

The  usual  explanation  of  the  frigidity  of  Paradise  Re- 
gained is  the  suggestion,  which  is  nearest  at  hand,  viz., 
that  it  is  the  effect  of  age.  Like  Ben  Jonson's  New  Inn, 
it  betrays  the  feebleness  of  senility,  and  has  one  of  the 
most  certain  marks  of  that  stage  of  authorship,  the 
attempt  to  imitate  himself  in  those  points  in  which  he 
was  once  strong.  "When  "  glad  no  more,  He  wears  a  face 
of  joy,  because  He  has  been  glad  of  yore."  Or  it  is  an 
"  ceuvre  de  lassitude,"  a  continuation,  with  the  inevitable 
defect  of  continuations,  that  of  preserving  the  forms  and 
wanting  the  soul  of  the  original,  like  the  second  parts  ot 
Faust,  of  Don  Quixote,  and  of  so  many  other  books. 

Both  these  explanations  of  the  inferiority  of  Paradise 
R< -g< lined  have  probability.     Either  of  them  may  be  true, 


xin.]  PARADISE  REGAINED.  193 

or  both  may  have  concurred  to  the  common  effect.  In 
favour  of  the  hypothesis  of  senility  is  the  fact,  recorded 
by  Phillips,  that  Milton  "could  not  hear  with  patience 
any  such  thing  when  related  to  him."  The  reader  will 
please  to  note  that  this  is  the  original  statement,  which 
the  critics  have  improved  into  the  statement  that  he 
preferred  Paradise  Regained  to  Paradise  Lost.  But 
his  approval  of  his  work,  even  if  it  did  not  amount  to 
preference,  looks  like  the  old  man's  fondness  for  his 
youngest  and  weakest  offspring. 

Another  view  of  the  matter,  however,  is  at  least 
possible.  Milton's  theory  as  to  the  true  mode  of 
handling  a  biblical  subject  was,  as  I  have  said,  to  add 
no  more  dressing,  or  adventitious  circumstance,  than 
should  assist  the  conception  of  the  sacred  verity.  After 
he  had  executed  Paradise  Lost,  the  suspicion  arose  that 
he  had  been  too  indulgent  to  his  imagination  ;  that  he 
had  created  too  much.  He  would  make  a  second  experi- 
ment, in  which  he  would  enforce  his  theory  with  more 
vigour.  In  the  composition  of  Paradise  Lost  he  must 
have  experienced  that  the  constraint  he  imposed  upon 
himself  had  generated,  as  was  said  of  Racine,  "  a  pleni- 
tude of  soul."  He  might  infer  that  were  the  compression 
carried  still  further,  the  reaction  of  the  spirit  might  1  e 
still  increased.  Poetry  he  had  said  long  before  should  be 
"  simple,  sensuous,  impassioned  "  {Tractate  of  Education). 
Nothing  enhances  passion  like  simplicity.  So  in  Paradise 
Regained  Milton  has  carried  simplicity  of  dress  to  the  verge 
of  nakedness.  It  is  probably  the  most  unadorned  poem 
extant  in  any  language.  He  has  pushed  severe  abstinence 
to  the  extreme  point,  possibly  beyond  the  point,  where  a 
reader's  power  is  stimulated  by  the  poet's  parsimony. 

It  may  elucidate  the  intention  of  the  author  of  Para- 

o 


104  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660— 1G74.  [chap. 

dise  Regained,  if  we  contrast  it  for  a  moment  with  a  poem 
constructed  upon  the  opposite  principle,  that,  viz.,  of  the 
maximum  of  adornment.  Claudian's  Rape  of  Proserpine 
(a.d.  400)  is  one  of  the  most  rich  and  elahorate  poems 
ever  written.  It  has  in  common  with  Milton  the  cir- 
cumstance that  its  whole  action  is  contained  in  a  solitary- 
event,  viz.,  the  carrying  off  of  Proserpine  from  the  vale  of 
Henna  by  Pluto.  All  the  personages,  too,  are  super- 
human ;  and  the  incident  itself  supernatural.  Claudian's 
ambition  was  to  overlay  his  story  with  the  gold  and 
jewellery  of  expression  and  invention.  [Nothing  is 
named  without  being  carved,  decked,  and  coloured  from 
the  inexhaustible  resources  of  the  poet's  treasury.  This  is 
not  done  with  ostentatious  pomp,  as  the  hyperbolical 
heroes  of  vulgar  novelists  are  painted,  but  always  with 
taste,  which  though  lavish  is  discriminating. 

Milton,  like  Wordsworth,  urged  his  theory  of  parsi- 
mony further  in  practice  than  he  would  have  done,  had 
he  not  been  possessed  by  a  spirit  of  protest  against  pre- 
vailing error.  Milton's  own  ideal  was  the  chiselled 
austerity  of  Greek  tragedy.  But  he  was  impelled  to 
overdo  the  system  of  holding  back,  by  his  desire  to  chal- 
lenge the  evil  spirit  which  was  abroad.  He  woidd  sepa- 
rate himself  not  only  from  the  Clevelands,  the  Denhams, 
and  the  Drydens,  whom  he  did  not  account  as  poets  at 
all,  but  even  from  the  Spenserians.  Thus,  instead  of 
severe,  he  became  rigid,  and  his  plainness  is  not  in- 
frequently jejune. 

"  Pomp  and  ostentation  of  reading,"  he  had  once 
written,  "  is  admired  among  the  vulgar ;  but,  in  matters 
of  religion,  he  is  learnedest  who  is  plainest."  As  Words- 
worth had  attempted  to  regenerate  poetry  by  recurring  to 
nature  and  to  common  objects,  Milton  would  revert  to 


xm.]  SAMSON  AGONISTES.  195 

the  pure  Word  of  God.  He  would  present  no  human 
adumbration  of  goodness,  but  Christ  Himself.  He  saw 
that  here  absolute  plainness  was  best.  In  the  presence 
of  this  unique  Being  silence  alone  became  the  poet.  This 
"higher  argument"  was  "sufficient  of  itself"  (Paradise 
Lost,  ix.  42). 

There  are  some  painters  whose  work  appeals  only  to 
painters,  and  not  to  the  public.  So  the  judgment  of 
poets  and  critics  has  been  more  favourable  to  Paradise 
Regained  than  the  opinion  of  the  average  reader.  John- 
son thinks  that  "if  it  had  been  written,  not  by  Milton, 
but  by  some  imitators,  it  would  receive  universal  praise." 
Wordsworth  thought  it  "  the  most  perfect  in  execution  of 
anything  written  by  Milton."  And  Coleridge  says  of  it, 
"  in  its  kind  it  is  the  most  perfect  poem  extant." 

There  is  a  school  of  critics  which  maintains  that  a  poem 
is,  like  a  statue  or  a  picture,  a  work  of  pure  art,  of  which 
beauty  is  the  only  characteristic  of  which  the  reader 
shoidd  be  cognisant.  And  beauty  is  wholly  ideal,  an  abso- 
lute quality,  out  of  relation  to  person,  time,  or  circum- 
stance. To  such  readers  Samson  Agonistes  will  seem  tame, 
flat,  meaningless,  and  artificial.  From  the  point  of  view  of 
the  critic  of  the  eighteenth  century,  it  is  "  a  tragedy  which 
only  ignorance  would  admire  and  bigotry  applaud  "  (Dr. 
Johnson).  If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  be  read  as  a  page  of 
cotemporary  history,  it  becomes  human,  pregnant  with  real 
woe,  the  record  of  an  heroic  soul,  not  baffled  by  temporary 
adversity,  but  totally  defeated  by  an  irreversible  fate,  and 
unflinchingly  accepting  the  situation,  in  the  firm  con- 
viction of  the  righteousness  of  the  cause.  If  fiction  is 
truer  than  fact,  fact  is  more  tragic  than  fiction.  In  the 
course  of  the  long  struggle  of  human  liberty  against  the 

o  2 


196  THIRD  PERIOD.     16G0-167J..  [chap. 

church,  there  had  been  terrible  catastrophes.  But  the  St. 
Bartholomew,  the  Bevocation  of  the  Edict,  the  Spanish 
Inquisition,  the  rule  of  Alva  in  the  Low  Countries, — these 
and  other  days  of  suffering  and  rebuke  have  been  left  to 
the  dull  pen  of  the  annalist,  who  has  variously  diluted 
their  story  in  his  literary  circumlocution  office.  The 
triumphant  royalist  reaction  of  1660,  when  the  old  ser- 
pent bruised  the  heel  of  freedom  by  totally  crushing 
Euritanism,  is  singular  in  this,  that  the  agonised  cry  of 
the  beaten  party  has  been  preserved  in  a  cotemporary 
monument,  the  intensest  utterance  of  the  most  intense  of 
English  poets — the  Samson  Agonistes. 

In  the  covert  representation,  which  we  have  in  this 
drama,  of  the  actual  wreck  of  Milton,  his  party,  and  his 
cause,  is  supplied  that  real  basis  of  truth  which  was 
necessary  to  inspire  him  to  write.  It  is  of  little  moment 
that  the  incidents  of  Samson's  life  do  not  form  a  strict 
parallel  to  those  of  Milton's  life,  or  to  the  career  of  the 
Euritan  cause.  The  resemblance  lies  in  the  sentiment 
and  situation,  not  in  the  bare  event.  The  glorious  youth 
of  the  consecrated  deliverer,  his  signal  overthrow  of  the 
Ehilistine  foe  with  means  so  inadequate  that  the  hand  of 
God  was  manifest  in  the  victory ;  his  final  humiliation, 
which  he  owed  to  his  own  weakness  and  disobedience,  and 
the  present  revelry  and  feasting  of  the  uncircumcised  Philis- 
tines in  the  temple  of  their  idol, — all  these  things  together 
constitute  a  parable  of  which  no  reader  of  Milton's  day 
could  possibly  mistake  the  interpretation.  More  obscurely 
adumbrated  is  the  day  of  vengeance,  when  virtue  should 
return  to  the  repentant  backslider,  and  the  idolatrous 
crew  should  bo  smitten  with  a  swift  destruction  in  the 
midst  of  their  insolent  revelry.  Add  to  these  the  two 
great    personal    misfortunes    of   the    poet's   life,   his   first 


xin.]  SAMSON  AGONISTES.  197 

marriage  with  a  Philistine  -woman,  out  of  sympathy  with 
hirn  or  his  cause,  and  his  blindness  ;  and  the  basis  of 
reality  becomes  so  complete,  that  the  nominal  personages 
of  the  drama  almost  disappear  behind  the  history  which 
we  read  through  them. 

But  while  for  the  biographer  of  Milton  Samson 
Agonistes  is  charged  with  a  pathos,  which  as  the  ex- 
pression of  real  suffering  no  Active  tragedy  can  equal,  it 
must  be  felt  that  as  a  composition  the  drama  is  languid, 
nerveless,  occasionally  halting,  never  brilliant.  If  the 
date  of  the  composition  of  the  Samson  be  1663,  this  may- 
have  been  the  result  of  weariness  after  the  effort  of 
Paradise  Lost.  If  this  drama  were  composed  in  1667, 
it  would  be  the  author's  last  poetical  effort,  and  the 
natural  explanation  would  then  be  that  his  power  over 
language  was  failing.  The  power  of  metaphor,  i.  e.  of 
indirect  expression,  is,  according  to  Aristotle,  the  cha- 
racteristic of  genius.  It  springs  from  vividness  of  con- 
ception of  the  thing  spoken  of.  It  is  evident  that  this 
intense  action  of  the  presentative  faculty  is  no  longer  at 
the  disposal  of  the  writer  of  Samson.  In  Paradise  Re- 
gained we  are  conscious  of  a  purposed  restraint  of  strength. 
The  simplicity  of  its  style  is  an  experiment,  an  essay  of  a 
new  theory  of  poetic  words.  The  simplicity  of  Samson 
Agonistes  is  a  flagging  of  the  forces,  a  drying  up  of  the 
rich  sources  from  which  had  once  flowed  the  golden  stream 
of  suggestive  phrase  which  makes  Paradise  Lost  a  unique 
monument  of  the  English  language.  I  could  almost  fancy 
that  the  consciousness  of  decay  utters  itself  in  the  lines 
(594)— 

I  feel  my  genial  spirits  droop, 
My  hopes  all  flat,  nature  within  me  seems 
In  all  her  functions  weary  of  herself, 


198  THIRD  PERIOD.     1CG0— 1671.  [chap. 

My  race  of  glory  run,  and  race  of  shame, 
And  I  shall  shortly  bo  with  them  that  rest. 

The  point  of  view  I  have  insisted  on  is  that  Milton 
conceives  a  poet  to  be  one  who  employs  his  imagination 
to  make  a  revelation  of  truth,  truth  which  the  poet  him- 
self entirely  believes.  One  objection  to  this  point  of 
view  will  at  once  occur  to  the  reader,  the  habitual  em- 
ployment in  both  poems  of  the  fictions  of  pagan  myth- 
ology. This  is  an  objection  as  old  as  Miltonic  criticism. 
The  objection  came  from  those  readers  who  had  no 
difficulty  in  realising  the  biblical  scenes,  or  in  accepting 
demoniac  agency,  but  who  found  their  imagination  re- 
pelled by  the  introduction  of  the  gods  of  Greece  or  Borne. 
It  is  not  that  the  biblical  heaven  and  the  Greek  Olympus 
are  incongruous,  but  it  is  that  the  unreal  is  blended  with 
the  real,  in  a  way  to  destroy  credibility. 

To  this  objection  the  answer  has  been  supplied  by  De 
Quincey.  To  Milton  the  personages  of  the  heathen 
Pantheon  were  not  merely  familiar  fictions,  or  established 
poetical  properties ;  they  were  evil  spirits.  That  they 
were  so  was  the  creed  of  the  early  interpreters.  In  their 
demonology,  the  Hebrew  and  the  Greek  poets  had  a  com- 
mon ground.  Up  to  the  advent  of  Christ,  the  fallen 
angels  had  been  permitted  to  delude  mankind.  To  Milton, 
as  to  Jerome,  Moloch  was  Mars,  and  Chemosh  Priapus. 
Plato  knew  of  hell  as  Tartarus,  and  the  battle  of  the 
giants  in  Hesiod  is  no  fiction,  but  an  obscured  tradition 
of  the  war  once  waged  in  heaven.  What  has  been  ad- 
verse to  Milton's  art  of  illusion  is,  that  the  belief  that 
the  gods  of  the  heathen  world  were  the  rebellious  angels 
has  ceased  to  be  part  of  the  common  creed  of  Christendom. 
Milton  was  nearly  the  last  of  our  great  writers  who  was 
fully  possessed   of  the   doctrine.     His   readers   now  no 


xiii.]  PAEADISE  LOST.  199 

longer  share  it  with  the  poet.  In  Addison's  time  (1712) 
some  of  the  imaginary  persons  in  Paradise  Lost  were 
beginning  to  make  greater  demands  upon  the  faith  of 
readers,  than  those  cool  rationalistic  times  could  meet. 

There  is  an  element  of  decay  and  death  in  poems  which 
we  vainly  style  immortal.  Some  of  the  sources  of 
Milton's  power  are  already  in  process  of  drying  up.  I  do 
not  speak  of  the  ordinary  caducity  of  language,  in  virtue 
of  which  every  effusion  of  the  human  spirit  is  lodged  in 
a  body  of  death.  Milton  suffers  little  as  yet  from  this 
cause.  There  are  few  lines  in  his  poems  which  are  less 
intelligible  now,  than  they  were  at  the  time  they  were 
written.  This  is  partly  to  be  ascribed  to  his  limited 
vocabulary,  Milton,  in  his  verse,  using  not  more  than 
eight  thousand  words,  or  about  half  the  number  used  by 
Shakespeare.  Nay,  the  position  of  our  earlier  writers  has 
been  improved  by  the  mere  spread  of  the  English  language 
over  a  wider  area.  Addison  apologised  for  Paradise  Lost 
falling  short  of  the  JEneid,  because  of  the  inferiority  of 
the  language  in  which  it  was  written.  "  So  divine  a 
poem  in  English  is  like  a  stately  palace  built  of  brick." 
The  defects  of  English  for  purposes  of  rhythm  and  har- 
mony are  as  great  now  as  they  ever  were,  but  the  space 
that  our  speech  fills  in  the  world  is  vastly  increased,  and 
this  increase  of  consideration  is  reflected  back  upon  our 
older  writers. 

But  if,  as  a  treasury  of  poetic  speech,  Paradise  Lost 
has  gained  by  time,  it  has  lost  far  more  as  a  storehouse 
of  divine  truth.  We  at  this  day  are  better  able  than 
ever  to  appreciate  its  force  of  expression,  its  grace  of 
phrase,  its  harmony  of  rhythmical  movement,  but  it  is 
losing  its  hold  over  our  imagination.  Strange  to  say,  this 
failure  of  vital  power  in  the  constitution  of  the  poem  is 


200  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660—1674  [chap. 

due  to  the  very  selection  of  subject  by  which  Milton  sought 
to  secure  perpetuity.  Not  content  with  being  the  poet  of 
men,  and  with  describing  human  passions  and  ordinary 
events,  he  aspired  to  present  the  destiny  of  the  whole  race 
of  mankind,  to  tell  the  story  of  creation,  and  to  reveal  the 
councils  of  heaven  and  hell.  And  he  would  raise  this 
structure  upon  no  unstable  base,  but  upon  the  sure 
foundation  of  the  written  word.  It  would  have  been  a 
thing  incredible  to  Milton  that  the  hold  of  the  Jewish 
Scriptures  over  the  imagination  of  English  men  and 
women  could  ever  be  weakened.  This  process,  however, 
has  already  commenced.  The  demonology  of  the  poem 
has  already,  with  educated  readers,  passed  from  the 
region  of  fact  into  that  of  fiction.  Not  so  universally, 
but  with  a  large  number  of  readers,  the  angelology  can 
be  no  more  than  what  the  critics  call  machinery.  And 
it  requires  a  violent  effort  from  any  of  our  day  to 
accommodate  their  conceptions  to  the  anthropomorphic 
theology  of  Paradise  Lost.  Were  the  sapping  process  to 
continue  at  the  same  rate  for  two  more  centuries,  the 
possibility  of  epic  illusion  would  be  lost  to  the  whole 
scheme  and  economy  of  the  poem.  Milton  has  taken  a 
scheme  of  life  for  life  itself.  Had  he,  in  the  choice  of 
subject,  remembered  the  principle  of  the  Aristotelean 
Poetic  (which  he  otherwise  highly  prized),  that  men  in 
action  are  the  poet's  proper  theme,  he  would  have  raised 
his  imaginative  fabric  on  a  more  permanent  foundation ; 
upon  the  appetites,  passions,  and  emotions  of  men,  their 
vices  and  virtues,  their  aims  and  ambitions,  which  are  a 
far  more  constant  quantity  than  any  theological  system. 
This  perhaps  was  what  Goethe  meant,  when  he  pro- 
nounced the  subject  of  Paradise  Lost  to  be  "  abominable, 
with  a  fair  outside,  but  rotten  inwardly." 


xin.]  PARADISE  LOST.  201 

Whatever  fortune  may  be  in  store  for  Paradise  Lost  in 
the  time  to  come,  Milton's  choice  of  subject  was,  at  the 
time  he  wrote,  the  only  one  which  offered  him  the 
guarantees  of  reality,  authenticity,  and  divine  truth, 
which  he  required.  We  need  not  therefore  search  the 
annals  of  literature  to  find  the  poem  which  may  have 
given  the  first  suggestion  of  the  fall  of  man  as  a  subject. 
This,  however,  has  been  done  by  curious  antiquaries,  and 
a  list  of  more  than  two  dozeu  authors  has  been  made, 
from  one  or  other  of  whom  Milton  may  have  taken  either 
the  general  idea  or  particular  hints  for  single  incidents. 
Milton,  without  being  a  very  wide  reader,  was  likely  to 
have  seen  the  Adamus  Exul  of  Grotius  (1601),  and  he 
certainly  had  read  Giles  Fletcher's  Christ's  Victor y  and 
Triumph  (1610).  There  are  traces  of  verbal  reminiscence 
of  Sylvester's  translation  of  Du  Bartas.  But  out  of  the 
long  catalogue  of  his  predecessors  there  appear  only  three, 
who  can  claim  to  have  conceived  the  same  theme  with 
anything  like  the  same  breadth,  or  on  the  same  scale  as 
Milton  has  done.  These  are  the  so-called  Csedinon, 
Andrei  ni,  and  Vondel. 

1.  The  anonymous  Anglo-Saxon  poem  which  passes 
under  the  name  of  Casdnion  has  this  one  point  of  resem- 
blance to  the  plot  of  Paradise  Lost,  that  in  it  the  seduction 
of  Eve  is  Satan's  revenge  for  his  expulsion  from  heaven. 
As  Francis  Junius  was  much  occupied  upon  this  poem  of 
which  he  published  the  text  in  1655,  it  is  likely  enough 
that  he  should  have  talked  of  it  with  his  friend  Milton. 

2.  Voltaire  related  that  Milton  during  his  tour  in  Italy 
(1638)  had  seen  performed  UAdamo,  a  sacred  drama  by 
the  Florentine  Giovanni  Battista  Andreini,  and  that  he 
"took  from  that  ridiculous  trifle"  the  hint  of  the  "noblest 
product  of  human  imagination."     Though  Voltaire  relates 


202  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660-1674.  [chap. 

this  as  a  matter  of  fact,  it  is  doubtful  if  it  be  more  than 
an  on  dit  which  he  had  picked  up  in  London  society. 
Voltaire  could  not  have  seen  Andreini's  drama,  for  it  is 
not  at  all  a  ridiculous  trifle.  Though  much  of  the 
dialogue  is  as  insipid  as  dialogue  in  operettas  usually  is, 
there  is  great  invention  in  the  plot,  and  animation  in  the 
action.  Andreini  is  incessantly  offending  against  taste, 
and  is  infected  with  the  vice  of  the  Marinists,  tho 
pursuit  of  concetti,  or  far-fetched  analogies  between  things 
unlike.  His  infernal  personages  are  grotesque  and  dis- 
gusting, rather  than  terrible;  his  scenes  in  heaven  childish 
— at  once  familiar  and  fantastic,  in  the  style  of  the 
Mysteries  of  the  age  before  the  drama.  With  all  these 
faults  the  Adamo  is  a  lively  and  spirited  representation 
of  the  Hebrew  legend,  and  not  unworthy  to  have  been 
the  antecedent  of  Paradise  Lost.  There  is  no  question 
of  plagiarism,  for  the  resemblance  is  not  even  that  of 
imitation  or  parentage,  or  adoption.  The  utmost  that 
can  be  conceded  is  to  concur  in  Hayley's  opinion  that, 
either  in  representation  or  in  perusal,  the  Adamo  of 
Andreini  had  made  an  impression  on  the  mind  of  Milton ; 
had,  as  Voltaire  says,  revealed  to  him  the  hidden  majesty 
of  the  subject.  There  had  been  at  least  three  editions 
of  the  Adamo  by  1641,  and  Milton  may  have  brought 
one  of  these  with  him,  among  the  books  which  he  had 
shipped  from  Venice,  even,  if  he  had  not  seen  the  drama 
on  the  Italian  stage,  or  had  not,  as  Todd  suggests,  met 
Andreini  in  person. 

So  much  appears  to  me  to  be  certain  from  the  internal 
evidence  of  the  two  compositions  as  they  stand.  But 
there  are  further  some  slight  corroborative  circumstances, 
(i.)  The  Trinity  College  sketch,  so  often  referred  to,  of 
Milton's  scheme  when,  it  was  intended  to  be  dramatic, 


xiii.]  PARADISE  LOST.  203 

keeps  much  more  closely,  both  in  its  personages  and  in 
its  ordering,  to  Andreini.  (ii.)  In  Phillips's  TJieatrum 
Poetarum,  a  compilation  in  which  he  had  his  uncle's 
help,  Andreini  is  mentioned  as  author  "  of  a  fantastic 
poem  entitled  Olivastro,  which  was  printed  at  Bologna, 
1642."  If  Andreini  was  known  to  Edward  Phillips,  the 
inference  is  that  he  was  known  to  Milton. 

3.  Lastly,  though  external  evidence  is  here  wanting, 
it  cannot  be  doubted  that  Milton  was  acquainted  with 
the  Lucifer  of  the  Dutch  poet,  Joost  van  den  Vondel, 
which  appeared  in  1654.  This  poem  is  a  regular  five-act 
drama  in  the  Dutch  language,  a  lancruaQie  which  Milton 
was  able  to  read.  In  spite  of  commercial  rivalry  and 
naval  war  there  was  much  intercourse  between  the  two 
republics,  and  Amsterdam  books  came  in  regular  course 
to  London.  The  Dutch  drama  turns  entirely  on  the 
revolt  of  the  angels,  and  their  expulsion  from  heaven,  the 
fall  of  man  beki!?  but  a  subordinate  incident.  In  Para- 
dise  Lost  the  relation  of  the  two  events  is  inverted,  the 
fall  of  the  angels  being  there  an  episode,  not  transacted, 
but  told  by  one  of  the  personages  of  the  epic.  It  is 
therefore  only  in  one  book  of  Paradise  Lost,  the  sixtb,  that 
the  influence  of  Vondel  can  be  looked  for.  There  may 
possibly  occur  in  other  parts  of  our  epic  single  lines 
of  wbich  an  original  may  be  found  in  Vondel's  drama. 
Notably  such  a  one  is  the  often-quoted — 

Better  to  reign  in  hell  than  serve  in  heaven. 

Paradise  Lost,  i.  263. 

which  is  Vondel's — 

En  liever  d'eerste  Vorst  in  eenigh  lager  hof 

Dan  in't  gezalight  lichfc  de  tweede,  of  noch  een  minder  ! 

Put  it  is  in  the  sixth  book  only  in  which  anything  more 


204  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660-1G74.  [chap. 

than  a  verbal  similarity  is  traceable.  According  to  Mr. 
Gosse,  who  has  given  an  analysis,  with  some  translated 
extracts,  of  Vondel's  Lucifer,  the  resemblances  are  too 
close  and  too  numerous  to  be  mere  coincidences.  Yondel 
is  more  human  than  Milton,  just  where  human  attributes 
are  unnatural,  so  that  heaven  is  made  to  seem  like  earth, 
while  in  Paradise  Lost  we  always  feel  that  we  are  in  a 
region  aloft.  Miltonic  presentation  has  a  dignity  and 
elevation,  which  is  not  only  wanting  but  is  sadly  missed 
in  the  Dutch  drama,  even  the  language  of  which  seems 
common  and  familiar. 

The  poems  now  mentioned  form,  taken  together,  the 
antecedents  of  Paradise  Lost.  In  no  one  instance,  taken 
singly,  is  the  relation  of  Milton  to  a  predecessor  that  of 
imitation,  not  even  to  the  extent  in  which  the  .ZEneid,  for 
instance,  is  an  imitation  of  the  Iliad  and  Odj^ssey.  The 
originality  of  Milton  lies  not  in  his  subject,  but  in  his 
manner ;  not  in  his  thoughts,  but  in  his  mode  of  thinking. 
His  story  and  his  personages,  their  acts  and  words,  had 
been  the  common  property  of  all  poets  since  the  fall  of 
the  Roman  Empire.  Not  only  the  three  I  have  specially 
named  had  boldly  attempted  to  set  forth  a  mythical 
representation  of  the  origin  of  evil,  but  many  others  had 
fluttered  round  the  same  central  object  of  poetic  attraction. 
Many  of  these  productions  Milton  had  read,  and  they  had 
made  their  due  impression  on  his  mind  according  to  their 
degree  of  force.  When  he  began  to  compose  Paradise  Lost 
he  had  the  reading  of  a  life-time  behind  him.  His  ima- 
gination worked  upon  an  accumulated  store,  to  which 
books,  observation,  and  reflection  had  contributed  in  equal 
proportions.  He  drew  upon  this  store  without  conscious 
distinction  of  its  sources.  Not  that  this  was  a  recollected 
material,  to  which  the  poet  had  recourse  whenever  inven- 


xiil]  PARADISE  LOST.  205 

tion  failed  him  ;  it  was  identified  with  himself.  His  verse 
flowed  from  his  own  soul,  but  Lis  was  a  soul  which  had 
grown  up  nourished  with  the  spoil  of  all  the  ages.  He 
created  his  epic,  as  metaphysicians  have  said  that  God 
created  the  world,  by  drawing  it  out  of  himself,  not  by 
building  it  up  out  of  elements  supplied  ab  extra. 

The  resemblances  to  earlier  poets,  Greek,  Latin,  Italian, 
which  could  be  pointed  out  in  Paradise  Lost,  were  so 
numerous  that  in  16 95,  only  twenty-one  years  after 
Milton's  death,  an  editor,  one  Patrick  Hume,  a  school- 
master in  the  neighbourhood  of  London,  was  employed  by 
Tonson  to  point  out  the  imitations  in  an  annotated  edition. 
From  that  time  downwards,  the  diligence  of  our  literary 
antiquaries  has  been  busily  employed  in  the  same  track  of 
research,  and  it  has  been  extended  to  the  English  poets,  a 
field  which  was  overlooked,  or  not  known  to  the  first 
collector.  The  result  is  a  valuable  accumulation  of  parallel 
passages,  which  have  been  swept  up  into  our  variorum 
Miltons,  and  make  Paradise  Lost,  for  English  phraseology, 
what  Virgil  was  for  Latin  in  the  middle  ages,  the  centre 
round  which  the  study  moves.  The  learner,  who  desires 
to  cultivate  his  feeling  for  the  fine  shades  and  variations 
of  expression,  has  here  a  rich  opportunity,  and  will  acknow- 
ledge with  gratitude  the  laborious  services  of  Newton, 
Pearce,  the  Wartons,  Todd,  Mitford,  and  other  compilers. 
But  these  heaped-up  citations  of  parallel  passages  some- 
what tend  to  hide  from  us  the  secret  of  Miltonic  language. 
We  are  apt  to  think  that  the  magical  effect  of  Milton's 
words  has  been  produced  by  painfully  inlaying  tesserae 
of  borrowed  metaphor — a  mosaic  of  bits  culled  from  exten- 
sive reading,  carried  along  by  a  retentive  memory,  and 
pieced  together  so  as  to  produce  a  new  whole,  with  the 
exquisite  art  of  a  Japanese  cabinet-maker.     It  is  some- 


206  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660—1674  [chap. 

times  admitted  that  Milton  was  a  plagiary,  but  it  is  urged 
in  extenuation  that  his  plagiarisms  were  always  repro- 
duced in  finer  forms. 

It  is  not  in  the  spirit  of  vindicating  Milton,  hut  as 
touching  the  mystery  of  metrical  language,  that  I  dwell  a 
few  moments  upon  this  misconception.  It  is  true  that 
Milton  has  a  way  of  making  his  own  even  what  ho 
borrows.  While  Horace's  thefts  from  Alcaeus  or  Pindar 
are  palpable,  even  from  the  care  which  he  takes  to  Latinise 
them,  Milton  cannot  help  transfusing  his  own  nature  into 
the  words  he  adopts.  But  this  is  far  from  all.  "When 
Milton's  widow  was  asked  "if  he  did  not  often  read 
Homer  and  Virgil,  she  understood  it  as  an  imputation 
upon  him  for  stealing  from  those  authors,  and  answered 
with  eagerness,  that  he  stole  from  nobody  but  the  muse 
who  inspired  him."  This  is  more  true  than  she  knew.  It 
is  true  there  are  many  phrases  or  images  in  Paradise  Lost 
taken  from  earlier  writers — taken,  not  stolen,  for  the 
borrowing  is  done  openly.  When  Adam,  for  instance,  begs 
Raphael  to  prolong  his  discourse  deep  into  night, — 

Sleep,  listening  to  thee,  will  watch  ; 
Or  we  can  bid  his  absence,  till  thy  song 
End,  and  dismiss  thee  ere  the  morning  shine  ; 

we  cannot  be  mistaken  in  saying  that  we  have  here  a  con- 
scious reminiscence  of  the  words  of  Alcinous  to  Ulysses  in 
the  eleventh  book  of  the  Odyssey.  Such  imitation  is  on 
the  surfaco,  and  does  not  touch  the  core  of  that  mysterious 
combination  of  traditive  with  original  elements  in  diction, 
which  Milton  and  Virgil,  alone  of  poets  known  to  us, 
have  effected.  Here  and  there,  many  times,  in  detached 
places,  Milton  has  consciously  imitated.  But,  beyond 
this  obvious  indebtedness,  there  runs  through  the  whole 


xiii.]  PARADISE  LOST.  207 

texture  of  his  verse  a  suggestion  of  secondary  meaning,  a 
meaning  which  has  heen  accreted  to  the  words,  by  their 
passage  down  the  consecrated  stream  of  classical  poetry. 
Milton  quotes  very  little  for  a  man  of  much  reading.  He 
says  of  himself  (Judgment  of  Bucer)  that  he  "  never  could 
delight  in  long  citations,  much  less  in  whole  traductions, 
whether  it  be  natural  disposition  or  education  in  me,  or 
that  my  mother  bore  me  a  speaker  of  what  God  made 
mine  own,  and  not  a  translator."  And  the  observation  is 
as  old  as  Bishop  Newton,  that  "  there  is  scarce  any  author 
who  has  written  so  much,  and  upon  such  various  subjects, 
and  yet  quotes  so  little  from  his  cotemporary  authors."  It  is 
said  that  "  he  could  repeat  Homer  almost  all  without  book." 
But  we  know  that  common  minds  are  apt  to  explain  to 
themselves  the  working  of  mental  superiority,  by  exagge- 
rating the  power  of  memory.  Milton's  own  writings  remain 
a  sufficient  evidence  that  his  was  not  a  verbal  memory. 
And,  psychologically,  the  power  of  imagination  and  the 
power  of  verbal  memory,  are  almost  always  found  in 
inverse  proportion. 

Milton's  diction  is  the  elaborated  outcome  of  all  the  best 
words  of  all  antecedent  poetry,  not  by  a  process  of  recol- 
lected reading  and  storage,  but  by  the  same  mental  habit 
by  which  we  learn  to  speak  our  mother  tongue.  Only,  in 
the  case  of  the  poet,  the  vocabulary  acquired  has  a  new 
meaning  superadded  to  the  words,  from  the  occasion  on 
which  they  have  been  previously  employed  by  others. 
Words,  over  and  above  their  dictionary  signification,  con- 
note all  the  feeling  which  has  gathered  round  them  by 
reason  of  their  employment  through  a  hundred  generations 
of  song.  In  the  words  of  Mr.  Myers,  "  without  ceasing 
to  be  a  logical  step  in  the  argument,  a  phrase  becomes  a 
centre  of  emotional  force.     The  complex  associations  which 


208  THIRD  PERIOD.    1660—167'!.  [cnAr. 

it  evokes,  modify  tlie  associations  evoked  by  other  words 
in  the  same  passage,  in  a  way  distinct  from  logical  or 
grammatical  connection."  The  poet  suggests  much  more 
than  he  says,  or  as  Milton  himself  has  phrased  it,  "  more 
is  meant  than  meets  the  ear." 

For  the  purposes  of  poetry  a  thought  is  the  representa- 
tive of  many  feelings,  and  a  word  is  the  representative  of 
many  thoughts.  A  single  word  may  thus  set  in  motion 
in  us  the  vibration  of  a  feeling  first  consigned  to  letters 
3000  years  ago.  For  oratory  words  should  be  winged, 
that  they  may  do  their  work  of  persuasion.  For  poetry 
words  should  be  freighted  with  associations  of  feeling,  that 
they  may  awaken  sympathy.  It  is  the  suggestive  power 
of  words  that  the  poet  cares  for,  rather  than  their  current 
denotation.  How  laughable  are  the  attempts  of  the 
commentators  to  interpret  a  line  in  Virgil  as  they  would 
a  sentence  in  Aristotle's  Physics  !  Milton's  secret  lies  in 
his  mastery  over  the  rich  treasure  of  this  inherited  vocabu- 
lary. He  wielded  it  as  his  own,  as  a  second  mother- 
tongue,  the  native  and  habitual  idiom,  of  his  thought  and 
feeling,  backed  by  a  massive  frame  of  character,  and  "a 
power  which  is  got  within  me  to  a  passion."  (Areojm- 
gitica.) 

"When  "Wordsworth  came  forward  at  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century  with  his  famous  reform  of  the  language 
of  English  poetry,  the  Miltonic  diction  was  the  current 
coin  paid  out  by  every  versifier.  "Wordsworth  revolted 
against  this  dialect  as  unmeaning,  hollow,  gaudy,  and  inane. 
His  reform  consisted  in  dropping  the  consecrated  phraseo- 
logy altogetber,  and  reverting  to  the  common  language 
of  ordinary  life.  It  was  necessary  to  do  this  in  order  to 
reconnect  poetry  with  the  sympathies  of  men,  and  make  it 
again  a  true  utterance  instead  of  the  ingenious  exercise  in 


xin.]  PARADISE  LOST.  209 

putting  together  words,  which  it  had  hecorne.  In  project- 
ing this  abandonment  of  the  received  tradition,  it  may  be 
thought  that  Wordsworth  was  condemning  the  Miltonic 
system  of  expression  in  itself.  But  this  was  not  so. 
Milton's  language  had  become  in  the  hands  of  the  imitators 
of  the  eighteenth  century  sound  without  sense,  a  husk 
without  the  kernel,  a  body  of  words  without  the  soul  of 
poetry.  Milton  had  created  and  wielded  an  instrument 
which  was  beyond  the  control  of  any  less  than  himself. 
He  used  it  as  a  living  language ;  the  poetasters  of  the 
eighteenth  century  wrote  it  as  a  dead  language,  as  boys 
make  Latin  verses.  Their  poetry  is  to  Paradise  Lost,  as 
a  modern  Gothic  restoration  is  to  a  genuine  middle-age 
church.  It  was  against  the  feeble  race  of  imitators,  and 
not  against  the  master  himself,  that  the  protest  of  the  lake 
poet  was  raised.  He  proposed  to  do  away  with  the 
Miltonic  vocabulary  altogether,  not  because  it  was  in  itself 
vicious,  but  because  it  could  now  only  be  employed  at 
secondhand. 

One  drawback  there  was  attendant  upon  the  style  chosen 
by  Milton,  viz.  that  it  narrowly  limited  the  circle  of  his 
readers.  All  words  are  addressed  to  those  who  understand 
them.  The  Welsh  triads  are  not  for  those  who  have  not 
learnt  Welsh  ;  an  English  poem  is  only  for  those  who 
understand  English.  But  of  understanding  English  there 
are  many  degrees  ;  it  requires  some  education  to  under- 
stand literary  style  at  all.  A  large  majority  of  the  natives 
of  any  country  possess,  and  use,  only  a  small  fraction  of 
their  mother  tongue.  These  people  may  be  left  out  of  the 
discussion.  Confining  ourselves  only  to  that  small  part  of 
our  millions  which  we  speak  of  as  the  educated  classes, 
that  is  those  whose  schooling  is  carried  on  beyond  fourteen 
years  of  age,  it  will  be  found  that  only  a  small  fraction  of 

p 


210  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660—1674.  [chap. 

the  men,  and  a  still  smaller  fraction  of  the  women,  fully 
apprehend  the  meaning  of  words.  This  is  the  case  with 
what  is  written  in  the  ordinary  language  of  hooks.  When 
we  pass  from  a  style  in  which  words  have  only  their 
simple  signification,  to  a  style  of  which  the  effect  depends  on 
the  suggestion  of  collateral  association,  we  leave  hehind 
the  majority  even  of  these  few.  This  is  what  is  meant 
by  the  standing  charge  against  Milton  that  he  is  too 
learned. 

It  is  no  paradox  to  say  that  Milton  was  not  a  learned 
man.  Such  men  there  were  in  his  day,  Usher,  Selden, 
Voss,  in  England ;  in  Holland,  Milton's  adversary  Salmasius, 
and  many  more.  A  learned  man  was  one  who  could  range 
freely  and  surely  over  the  whole  of  classical  and  patristic 
remains  in  the  Greek  and  Latin  languages  (at  least),  with 
the  accumulated  stores  of  philological,  chronological, 
historical  criticism,  necessary  for  the  interpretation  of 
those  remains.  Milton  had  neither  made  these  acquisi- 
tions, nor  aimed  at  them.  He  even  expresses  himself,  in 
his  vehement  way,  with  contempt  of  them.  "  Hollow 
antiquities  sold  by  the  seeming  bulk,"  "  marginal  stuff- 
ings," "  horse-loads  of  citations  and  fathers,"  are  some  of 
his  petulant  outbursts  against  the  learning  that  had  been 
played  upon  his  position  by  his  adversaries.  He  says  ex- 
pressly that  he  had  "  not  read  the  Councils,  save  here  and 
there "  (Smertymnuus).  His  own  practice  had  been 
"  industrious  and  select  reading."  He  chose  to  make 
himself  a  scholar  rather  than  a  learned  man.  The  aim  of 
his  studies  was  to  improve  faculty,  not  to  acquire  know- 
ledge. "  Who  would  be  a  poet  must  himself  be  a  true 
poem  j"  his  heart  should  "contain  of  just,  wise,  good,  the 
perfect  shape."  He  devoted  himself  to  self-preparation 
with  the  assiduity  of  Petrarch  or  of  Goethe.     "  In  weari- 


xin.]  PARADISE  LOST.  211 

some  labour  and  studious  watchings  I  have  tired  out 
almost  a  whole  youth."  "  Labour  and  intense  study  I 
take  to  be  my  portion  in  this  life."  He  would  know, 
not  all,  but  "  what  was  of  use  to  know,"  and  form  himself 
by  assiduous  culture.  The  first  Englishman  to  whom  the 
designation  of  our  series,  Men  of  Letters,  is  appropriate, 
Milton  was  also  the  noblest  example  of  the  type.  He 
cultivated,  not  letters,  but  himself,  and  sought  to  enter 
into  possession  of  his  own  mental  kingdom,  not  that  he 
might  reign  there,  but  that  he  might  royally  use  its  re- 
sources in  building  up  a  work,  which  should  bring  honour 
to  his  country  and  his  native  tongue. 

The  style  of  Paradise  Lost  is  then  only  the  natural  ex- 
pression of  a  soul  thus  exquisitely  nourished  upon  the  best 
thoughts  and  finest  words  of  all  ages.  It  is  the  language 
of  one  who  lives  in  the  companionship  of  the  great  and 
the  wise  of  past  time.  It  is  inevitable  that  when  such  a 
one  speaks,  his  tones,  his  accent,  the  melodies  of  his 
rhythm,  the  inner  harmonies  of  his  linked  thoughts,  the 
grace  of  his  allusive  touch,  should  escape  the  common  ear. 
To  follow  Milton  one  should  at  least  have  tasted  the 
same  training  through  which  he  put  himself.  "  Te  quoque 
dignum  finge  deo."  The  many  cannot  see  it,  and  com- 
plain that  the  poet  is  too  learned.  They  would  have 
Milton  talk  like  Bunyan  or  William  Cobbett,  whom  they 
understand.  Milton  did  attempt  the  demagogue  in  his 
pamphlets,  only  with  the  result  of  blemishing  his  fame  and 
degrading  his  genius.  The  best  poetry  is  that  which  calls 
upon  us  to  rise  to  it,  not  that  which  writes  down  to  us. 

Milton  knew  that  his  was  not  the  road  to  popularity. 
He  thirsted  for  renown,  but  he  did  not  confound  renown 
with  vogue.  A  poet  has  his  choice  between  the  many 
and  the  few  ;  Milton  chose  the  few.     "  Paucis  hujusmodi 


212  THIRD  PERIOD.    1660—1671.  [chap. 

lectoribus  contentus,"  is  his  own  inscription  in  a  copy  of 
his  pamphlets  sent  by  him  to  Patrick  Young.  He  derived 
a  stem  satisfaction  from  the  reprobation  with  which  the 
vulgar  visited  him.  His  divorce  tracts  were  addressed 
to  men  who  dared  to  think,  and  ran  the  town  "  number- 
ing good  intellects."  His  poems  he  wished  laid  up  in  the 
Bodleian  Library,  "  where  the  jabber  of  common  people 
cannot  penetrate,  and  whence  the  base  throng  of  readers 
keep  aloof"  (Ode  to  Mouse).  If  Milton  resembled  a  Eoman 
republican  in  the  severe  and  stoic  elevation  of  his  cha- 
racter, he  also  shared  the  aristocratic  intellectualism  of 
the  classical  type.  He  is  in  marked  contrast  to  the  level- 
ling hatred  of  excellence,  the  Christian  trades-unionism  of 
the  model  Catholic  of  the  mould  of  S.  Francois  de  Sales, 
whose  maxim  of  life  is  "  marchons  avec  la  troupe  de  nos 
freres  et  compagnons,  doucement,  paisiblement,  et  ami- 
ablement."     To  Milton  the  people  are — 

But  a  herd  confus'd, 

A  miscellaneous  rabble,  who  extol 

Things  vulgar. 

Paradise  Regained,  iii.  49. 

At  times  his  indignation  carries  him  past  the  cour- 
tesies of  equal  speech,  to  pour  out  the  vials  of  prophetic 
rebuke,  when  he  contemplates  the  hopeless  struggle  of 
those  who  are  the  salt  of  the  earth,  "amidst  the  throng  and 
noises  of  vulgar  and  irrational  men  "  (Tenure  of  Kings), 
and  he  rates  them  to  their  face  as  "  owls  and  cuckoos, 
asses,  apes,  and  dogs  "  (Sonnet  xn.) ;  not  because  they  will 
not  listen  to  him,  but  because  they  "  hate  learning  more 
than  toad  or  asp  "  (Sonnet  ix.). 

Milton's  attitude  must  be  distinguished  from  patrician 
pride,  or  the  noli-me-tangere  of  social  exclusiveness.  Nor, 
again,  was  it,  like  Callimachus's,  the  fastidious  repulsion 


xin.]  PARADISE  LOST.  213 

of  a  delicate  taste  for  the  hackneyed  in  literary  expression ; 
it  Avas  the  lofty  disdain  of  aspiring  virtue  for  the  sordid 
and  ignoble. 

Various  ingredients,  constitutional  or  circumstantial, 
concurred  to  produce  this  repellent  or  unsympathetic  atti- 
tude in  Milton.  His  dogmatic  Calvinism,  from  the  effects 
of  which  his  mind  never  recovered — a  system  which  easily 
disposes  to  a  cynical  abasement  of  our  fellow-men — counted 
for  something.  Something  must  be  set  down  to  habitual 
converse  with  the  classics — a  converse  which  tends  to  im- 
part to  character,  as  Platner  said  of  Godfrey  Hermann,  "  a 
certain  grandeur  and  generosity,  removed  from  the  spirit 
of  cabal  and  mean  cunning  which  prevail  among  men  of 
the  world."  His  blindness  threw  him  out  of  the  com- 
petition of  life,  and  back  upon  himself,  in  a  way  which 
was  sure  to  foster  egotism.  These  were  constitutional 
elements  of  that  aloofness  from  men  which  characterised 
all  his  utterance.  These  disposing  causes  became  inex- 
orable fate,  when,  by  the  turn  of  the  political  wheel  of 
fortune,  he  found  himself  alone  amid  the  mindless 
dissipation  and  reckless  materialism  of  the  Eestoration. 
He  felt  himself  then  at  war  with  human  society  as 
constituted  around  him,  and  was  thus  driven  to  with- 
draw himself  within  a  poetic  world  of  his  own  crea- 
tion. 

In  this  antagonism  of  the  poet  to  his  age  much  was 
lost ;  much  energy  was  consumed  in  what  was  mere 
friction.  The  artist  is  then  most  powerful  when  he  finds 
himself  in  accord  with  the  age  he  lives  in.  The  pleni- 
tude of  art  is  only  reached  when  it  marches  with  the 
sentiments  which  possess  a  community.  The  defiant 
attitude  easily  slides  into  paradox,  and  the  mind  falls  in 
love  with  its  own  wilfulness.     The  exceptional  emergence 


211  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660—1674.  [chap. 

of  Milton's  three  poems,  Paradise  Lost,  Regained,  and 
Samson,  deeply  colours  their  context.  The  greatest 
achievements  of  art  in  their  kinds  have  been  the  capital 
specimens  of  a  large  crop ;  as  the  Iliad  and  Odyssey  are 
the  picked  lines  out  of  many  rhapsodies,  and  Shakespeare 
the  king  of  an  army  of  contemporary  dramatists.  Milton 
was  a  survival,  felt  himself  such,  and  resented  it. 

Unchang'd, 

Though  fall'n  on  evil  days, 

On  evil  days  though  fall'n,  and  evil  tongues ; 
In  darkness,  and  with  dangers  compass' d  round, 
And  solitude. 

Paradise  Lost,  vii  24. 

Poetry  thus  generated  we  should  naturally  expect  to 
meet  with  more  admiration  than  sympathy.  And  such, 
on  the  whole,  has  been  Milton's  reception.  In  1678, 
twenty  years  after  the  publication  of  Paradise  Lost,  Prior 
spoke  of  him  (Hind  transverse^)  as  "  a  rough,  unhewn 
fellow,  that  a  man  must  sweat  to  read  him."  And  in 
1842,  Hallam  had  doubts  "if  Paradise  Lost,  published 
eleven  years  since,  would  have  met  with  a  greater  de- 
mand "  than  it  did  at  first.  It  has  been  much  disputed 
by  historians  of  our  Literature  what  inference  is  to  be 
drawn  from  the  numbers  sold  of  Paradise  Lost  at  its 
first  publication.  Between  1667  and  1678,  a  space  of 
twenty  years,  three  editions  had  been  printed,  making 
together  some  4500  copies.  Was  this  a  large  or  a  small 
circulation  1  Opinions  are  at  variance  on  the  point. 
Johnson  and  Hallam  thought  it  a  large  sale,  as  books 
went  at  that  time.  Campbell,  and  the  majority  of  our 
annalists  of  books,  have  considered  it  as  evidence  of 
neglect.  Comparison  with  what  is  known  of  other  cases 
of  circulation  leads   to   no  more   certain   conclusion.     On 


xiii.]  PARADISE  LOST.  215 

the  one  hand,  the  public  could  not  take  more  than  three 
editions — say  3000  copies — of  the  plays  of  Shakespeare 
in  sixty  years,  from  1623  to  1684.  If  this  were  a  fair 
measure  of  possible  circulation  at  the  time,  we  should 
have  to  pronounce  Milton's  sale  a  great  success.  On  the 
other  hand,  Cleveland's  poems  ran  through  sixteen  or 
seventeen  editions  in  about  thirty  years.  If  this  were 
the  average  output  of  a  popular  book,  the  inference 
would  be  that  Paradise  Lost  was  not  such  a  book. 

Whatever  conclusion  may  be  the  true  one  from  the 
amount  of  the  public  demand,  we  cannot  be  wrong  in 
asserting  that  from  the  first,  and  now  as  then,  Paradise 
Lost  has  been  more  admired  than  read.  The  poet's  wish 
and  expectation  that  he  should  find  "  fit  audience,  though 
few,"  has  been  fulfilled.  Partly  this  has  been  due  to 
his  limitation,  his  unsympathetic  disposition,  the  de- 
ficiency of  the  human  element  in  his  imagination,  and 
his  presentation  of  mythical  instead  of  real  beings.  But 
it  is  also  in  part  a  tribute  to  his  excellence,  and  is  to  be 
ascribed  to  the  lofty  strain  which  requires  more  effort  to 
accompany,  than  an  average  reader  is  able  to  make,  a 
majestic  demeanour  which  no  parodist  has  been  able  to 
degrade,  and  a  wealth  of  allusion  demanding  more 
literature  than  is  possessed  by  any  but  the  few  whose  life 
is  lived  with  the  poets.  An  appreciation  of  Milton  is  the 
last  reward  of  consummated  scholarship  ;  and  we  may 
apply  to  him  what  Quintilian  has  said  of  Cicero,  "  Ille  se 
profecisse  sciat,  cui  Cicero  valde  placebit." 

Causes  other  than  the  inherent  faults  of  the  poem 
long  continued  to  weigh  down  the  reputation  of  Paradise 
Lost.  In  Great  Britain  the  sense  for  art,  poetry,  litera- 
ture, is  confined  to  a  few,  while  our  political  life  has 
been  diffused  and  vigorous.     Hence  all  judgment,  even 


216  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660-1674.  [chap. 

upon  a  poet,  is  biassed  "by  considerations  of  party.     Be- 
fore   1688   it   was   impossible  that   the   poet,  who   had 
justified  regicide,  could  have  any  public  beyond  the  sup- 
pressed and  crouching  Nonconformists.     The  Revolution 
of  1688  removed  this  ban,  and  from  that  date  forward 
the  Liberal  party  in    England    adopted    Milton   as    the 
republican  poet.     William  Hogg,  writing  in   1690,  says 
of  Paradise  Lost  that  "  the  fame  of  the  poem  is  spread 
through   the  whole    of  England,  but    being  written    in 
English,  it  is  as  yet  unknown  in  foreign  lands."     This  is 
obvious   exaggeration.     Lauder,    about    1748,    gives   the 
date  exactly,  when  he  speaks  of  "  that  infinite  tribute  of 
veneration  that  has  been  paid  to  him  these  sixty  years 
past."     One  distinguished  exception  there  was.     Dryden, 
royalist  and  Catholic  though  he  was,  was  loyal  to  his  art. 
Nothing  which  Dryden  ever  Avrote  is  so  creditable  to  his 
taste,  as  his  being  able  to  see,  and  daring  to  confess,  in 
the  day  of  disesteem,  that  the  regicide  poet  alone  deserved 
the  honour  which  his  cotemporaries  were  for  rendering 
to  himself.     Dryden's  saying,  "  This  man  cuts  us  all  out, 
and  the  ancients  too,"  is  not  perfectly  well  vouched,  but 
it  would  hardly  have  been  invented,  if  it  had  not  been 
known  to  express  his  sentiments.     And  Dryden's  sense 
of  Milton's  greatness  grew  with  his  taste.     When,  in  the 
preface  to  his  State  of  Innocence  (1674),  Dryden  praised 
Paradise  Lost,  he  "  knew  not  half  the  extent  of  its  ex- 
cellence," John  Dennis  says,  "  as  more  than  twenty  years 
afterwards  he  confessed  to  me."     Had  he  known  it,  he 
never  could  have  produced  his  vulgar  parody,  lite  State 
of  Innocence,  a  piece  upon  which  he  received  the  com- 
pliments of  his  cotemporaries,  as  "  having  refined  the  ore 
of  Milton." 

'With  the  one  exception  of  Dryden,  a  better  critic  than 


xin.]  PARADISE  LOST.  217 

poet,  Milton's  repute  was  the  work  of  the  Whigs.  The 
first  edition  de  luxe  of  Paradise  Lost  (1688)  was  brought 
out  by  a  subscription  got  up  by  the  Whig  leader,  Lord 
Somers.  In  this  edition  Dryden's  pinchbeck  epigram  so 
often  quoted,  first  appeared — 

Three  poets  in  three  distant  ages  born,  &c. 

It  was  the  Whig  essayist,  Addison,  whose  papers  in  the 
Spectator  (1712)  did  most  to  make  the  poem  popularly 
known.  In  1737,  in  the  height  of  the  Whig  ascendancy, 
the  bust  of  Milton  penetrated  Westminster  Abbey,  though, 
in  the  generation  before,  the  Dean  of  that  day  had  refused 
to  admit  an  inscription  on  the  monument  erected  to  John 
Phillips,  because  the  name  of  Milton  occurred  in  it. 

The  zeal  of  the  Liberal  party  in  the  propagation  of  the 
cult  of  Milton  was  of  course  encountered  by  an  equal 
passion  on  the  part  of  the  Tory  opposition.  They  were 
exasperated  by  the  lustre  which  was  reflected  upon  Re- 
volution principles  by  the  name  of  Milton.  About  the 
middle  of  the  eighteenth  century,  when  Whig  popularity 
was  already  beginning  to  wane,  a  desperate  attempt  was 
made  by  a  rising  Tory  pamphleteer  to  crush  the  new  Liberal 
idol.  Dr.  Johnson,  the  most  vigorous  writer  of  the  day, 
conspired  with  one  William  Lauder,  a  native  of  Scotland 
seeking  fortune  in  London,  to  stamp  out  Milton's  credit  by 
proving  him  to  be  a  wholesale  plagiarist.  Milton's  imita- 
tions— he  had  gathered  pearls  wherever  they  were  to  be 
found — were  thus  to  be  turned  into  an  indictment  against 
him.  One  of  the  beauties  of  Paradise  Lost  is,  as  has  been 
already  said,  the  scholar's  flavour  of  literary  reminiscence 
which  hangs  about  its  words  and  images.  This  Virgilian 
art,  in  which  Milton  has  surpassed  his  master,  was  repre- 
sented by  this  pair  of  literary  bandits  as  theft,  and  held 

Q 


218  THIRD  PERIOD.     1660—1674.  [chap. 

to  prove  at  once  moral  obliquity  and  intellectual  feeble- 
ness. This  line  of  criticism  was  well  chosen  ;  it  was,  in 
fact,  an  appeal  to  the  many  from  the  few.  Unluckily  for 
the  plot,  Lauder  was  not  satisfied  with  the  amount  of  re- 
semblance shown  by  real  parallel  passages.  He  ventured 
upon  the  bold  step  of  forging  verses,  closely  resembling 
lines  in  Paradise  Lost,  and  ascribing  these  verses  to  older 
poets.  He  even  forged  verses  which  he  quoted  as  if  from 
Paradise  Lost,  and  showed  them  as  Milton's  plagiarisms 
from  preceding  writers.  Even  these  clumsy  fictions 
might  have  passed  without  detection  at  that  uncritical 
period  of  our  literature,  and  under  the  shelter  of  the  name 
of  Samuel  Johnson.  But  Lauder's  impudence  grew  with 
the  success  of  his  criticisms,  which  he  brought  out  as  letters, 
through  a  series  of  years,  in  the  Gentleman's  Magazine. 
There  was  a  translation  of  Paradise  Lost  into  Latin 
hexameters,  which  had  been  made  in  1690  by  William 
Hogg.  Lauder  inserted  lines,  taken  from  this  translation, 
into  passages  taken  from  Massenius,  Staphorstius,  Taub- 
mannus,  neo-Latin  poets,  whom  Milton  had,  or  might  have 
read,  and  presented  these  passages  as  thefts  by  Milton. 

Low  as  learning  had  sunk  in  England  in  1750,  Hogg's 
Latin  Paradisus  amissus  was  just  the  book,  which  tutors  of 
colleges  who  could  teach  Latin  verses  had  often  in  their 
hands.  Mr.  Bowie,  a  tutor  of  Oriel  College,  Oxford, 
immediately  recognised  an  old  acquaintance  in  one  or  two 
of  the  interpolated  lines.  This  put  him  upon  the  scent, 
he  submitted  Lauder's  passages  to  a  closer  investigation,  and 
the  whole  fraud  was  exposed.  Johnson,  who  was  not 
concerned  in  the  cheat,  and  was  only  guilty  of  indolence 
and  party  spirit,  saved  himself  by  sacrificing  his  comrade. 
He  afterwards  took  ample  revenge  for  the  mortification  of 
this  exposure,  in  his  Lives  of  the  Poets,  in  which  he  em- 


xin.]  PARADISE  LOST.  219 

ployed  all  his  vigorous  powers  and  consummate  skill  to 
write  down  Milton.  He  undoubtedly  dealt  a  heavy  blow 
at  the  poet's  reputation,  and  succeeded  in  damaging  it  for 
at  least  two  generations  of  readers.  He  did  for  Milton 
what  Aristophanes  did  for  Socrates,  effaced  the  real  man 
and  replaced  him  by  a  distorted  and  degrading  caricature. 

It  was  again  a  clergyman  to  whom  Milton  owed  his 
vindication  from  Lauder's  onslaught.  John  Douglas, 
afterwards  bishop  of  Salisbury,  brought  Bowie's  materials 
before  the  public.  But  the  high  Anglican  section  of 
English  life  has  never  thoroughly  accepted  Milton.  R.  S. 
Hawker,  vicar  of  Morwenstow,  himself  a  poet  of  real  feel- 
ing, gave  expression,  in  rabid  abuse  of  Milton,  to  the 
antipathy  which  more  judicious  churchmen  suppress. 
Even  the  calm  and  gentle  author  of  the  Christian  Year, 
wide  heart  ill-sorted  with  a  narrow  creed,  deliberately 
framed  a  theory  of  Poetic  for  the  express  purpose,  as  it 
would  seem,  of  excluding  the  author  of  Paradise  Lost 
from  the  first  class  of  poets. 

But  a  work  such  as  Milton  has  constructed,  at  once 
intense  and  elaborate,  firmly  knit  and  broadly  laid,  can 
afford  to  wait.  Time  is  all  in  its  favour,  and  against  its 
detractors.  The  Church  never  forgives,  and  faction  does 
not  die  out.  But  Milton  has  been,  for  two  centuries,  get- 
ting beyond  the  reach  of  party  feeling,  whether  of  friends 
or  foes.  In  each  national  aggregate  an  instinct  is  always 
at  work,  an  instinct  not  equal  to  exact  discrimination  of 
lesser  degrees  of  merit,  but  surely  finding  out  the  chief 
forces  which  have  found  expression  in  the  native  tongue. 
This  instinct  is  not  an  active  faculty,  and  so  exposed  to  the 
influences  which  warp  the  will,  it  is  a  passive  deposition 
from  unconscious  impression.  Our  appreciation  of  our 
poet  is  not  to  be  measured  by  our  choosing  him  for  our 


220  THIRD  PEEIOD.     1660—1674.  [en.  xui. 

favourite  closet  companion,  or  reading  him  often.  As 
Voltaire  wittily  said  of  Dante,  "  Sa  reputation  s'affirmera 
toujours,  parce  qu'on  ne  le  lit  guere."  We  shall  prefer 
to  read  the  fashionable  novelist  of  each  season  as  it  passes, 
but  we  shall  choose  to  be  represented  at  the  international 
congress  of  world  poets  by  Shakespeare  and  Milton; 
Shakespeare  first,  and  next  Milton. 


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